Curio Cards: From Legacy Contracts to Modern NFT Trading
Curio Cards: From Legacy Contracts to Modern NFT Trading
馃 Too Old for OpenSea
Curio Cards, launched in May 2017 before CryptoPunks, faced compatibility issues with modern NFT platforms due to its early smart contracts. In 2021, the community and original team developed a wrapper contract to enable trading on platforms like OpenSea.
The project has maintained strong community engagement through various initiatives:
- CCSupply.xyz: Tracks ownership and card statistics
- Community merchandise store with physical collectibles
- Snowglobes holiday airdrop featuring 3D artwork
- Collaborations with other historical NFT projects
- Remix Gallery showcasing 200+ artistic reinterpretations
Only 20 full sets have been assembled to date, and the project has been featured in museums and books documenting NFT history.
Curio Cards launched one month before CryptoPunks, on May 9, 2017
In the four years since the last NFT bull run, Curio Cards never went away Instead, the community got active and did some amazing things to expand on the existing lore of the original project From airdrops to merch to collabs, here are a few highlights!
Curio Cards have appeared in multiple books, museums and galleries documenting the history of NFTs 馃摐
.@MyCurioCards are probably up because they were just in a museum again yesterday.
Curio Cards is a wild story
Imagine building a company from $0 to $100M with no marketing budget, and giving it all away. I just recorded one of the wildest Web3 origin stories with @travisformayor , co-founder of Curio Cards - one of the earliest digital collectibles on Ethereum. They launched in 2017,
It took four years for Curio Cards to mint out. And then just a couple of months to be among the top-traded NFT collections on OpenSea.
Curio Cards is so old that the original contracts aren't compatible with OpenSea (or other modern NFT utilities). In 2021, during the Rediscovery, a wrapper contract was developed by the community and members of the original team to make trading on new NFT platforms possible.
It's been four years since @dmorey became a Curio Cards full set collector. Only 20 full sets have been assembled so far 馃弳
Anyone doubting that crypto cycles still matter - four years ago today, legendary collector @dmorey completed his full set of @MyCurioCards
The Story Behind Curio Card 17b - The Misprint That Made History
**Curio Card 17b**, known as the 'Misprint Card', has become one of the most valuable pieces in the collection due to its fascinating origin story. The card emerged from an incorrectly deployed smart contract, but collectors chose to mint it anyway. What makes this error particularly interesting is that the artwork itself depicts the 2017 Bitcoin fork - creating an unintended parallel between the card's deployment mistake and its subject matter. This follows the tradition of unique Curio Cards like the Barbarian (2017), which gained value through intentional scarcity and technical innovation as Ethereum's first animated card.
Dogs Trading: Early Comic Art on Ethereum
Dogs Trading, created by @helloluis, stands as one of the earliest examples of comic-style art on Ethereum. The piece pays homage to Cassius Marcellus Coolidge's 1903 painting A Friend In Need from the Dogs Playing Poker series. The artwork cleverly comments on crypto culture, featuring popular 2017 altcoins. A notable detail shows the privacy coin Monero being discretely passed under the table. This piece represents a significant milestone in early blockchain art history, demonstrating how NFTs could be used to create meaningful commentary on crypto culture.
Curio Cards: A Pioneer in Digital Art Collection
Curio Cards, the first Art NFT on Ethereum mainnet, showcases diverse digital art forms including: - Photoshop creations - Internet memes - Digital stickers - Cartoon illustrations - Portrait artwork - Pen drawings - Digital collages - Animations The project traces its roots to a 2016 Bitcoin physical art show featuring @cryptograffiti, which inspired the creation of Curio Cards. The collection represents various artistic styles and narratives, making it a significant piece of digital art history. *Learn more about collecting these historic digital artworks through our documentation.*
Curio Cards Rarity Update: Education Card's Historical Significance
Card 26 'Education' holds historical significance as the initially rarest Curio Card with a launch supply of 111. This hand-drawn piece by Daniel Friedman features geometric patterns created with pen on paper. Currently, Friedman's other works - Cards 24 'Complexity' and 25 'Passion' - share the distinction of being the rarest with only 33 active cards each. Track real-time Curio Cards supply data at [ccsupply.xyz](http://ccsupply.xyz) View Education card on [OpenSea](https://opensea.io/item/ethereum/0x73da73ef3a6982109c4d5bdb0db9dd3e3783f313/26)
Historic Curio Cards Christie's Auction Anniversary
**Ethereum co-founder Taylor Gerring** made history by winning a landmark Christie's auction featuring Curio Cards, the first-ever NFT art project on Ethereum mainnet. The sale at @ChristiesInc represented a pivotal moment for both Ethereum and NFT history, marking the first time a major traditional auction house embraced early blockchain art. This milestone event helped bridge the gap between traditional art markets and digital collectibles, establishing Curio Cards' significance in the evolution of blockchain-based art.