Here we are, the final iteration of A year of collecting part three. This article starts back in September when I put in an offer for The Piper by Des Lucrece. I had admired his work for a long time, but never pursued it. Two days later I had it in my wallet and started a very cool journey with an amazing community.
I think it’s important to find a good community you can be a part of if you’re going to be active in this space. You just have to find the right one that fits for you. I love the people and the atmosphere in the Monster Discord. There are a lot of older people that are my age and have kids. Everyone rally’s around Lucrece’s art while also uplifting tons of other talented artists in the community. It feels special.
A month later I was able to mint two of The Mancer’s. I won one mint in a raffle and the other for participating in a holiday event. In the last year I’ve had a group of friends that the majority of have taken a step back from this space. It was great finding a new community to be a part of.
November turned out to be an amazing month for my collection. It started out with a free mint for owning some Art Blocks pieces. The Friendship bracelet is a great project that was well received and executed. Every piece comes with directions on how to make a physical friendship bracelet. I got lucky and ended up minting a pretty rare one. Top 1,000 out of a 32k piece project. They are constantly moving pieces of art, so click the link below it to check it out.
About a week later, Deca Art was doing a raffle for a Rata decal. I love Rata’s work on Tezos and have collected some small pieces. The Degenaissance was a piece I had always wanted to collect. I snagged one trying to sway the NFT gods in my favor, hoping to win the raffle for the decal.
Something must of worked, I ended up winning the raffle. The next week I went to Marfa for the Art Blocks open house weekend. Had to mint the Decal while on the trip.
The Fidenza Mural in Marfa. Photo taken by me.
Art Blocks gave out a gift for going to the open house event. My daughter and me got to mint Marfa Yucca’s by Daniel Calderon Arenas for attending.
The card they gave us with instructions inside on how to mint.
Marfa Yucca #179 my mint
Marfa Yucca #182 my daughter’s mint
Now came the last mint I had for the end of November. It was a surprise open edition release for a Zancan project, Landscape with Carbon Capture. I’ve always wanted a 1/1 by Zancan, but could never afford one. This was such an amazing opportunity to collect from one of the greats.
Landscape with Carbon Capture #1714
When I said November was my month in collecting, I wasn’t joking. My first mint pulled the rarest trait you can get, pink paper. The second one I minted had another rare trait, neon green glow. What a great month. Six mints, three of which were free and three that have rare traits.
Landscape with Carbon Capture #2150
That kicked off a new season for me. All the great 1/1 artists I had come to love started releasing open editions. I no longer had to watch their work from the side lines, I could participate and collect. It was a really cool experience and I met a few new amazing artists.
The first one I minted was from an artist I had never heard of, but quickly became a big fan of, Manfredi Caracciolo.
Art Matters by Manfredi Caracciolo
The next artist I had discovered through the Des Lucrece discord, Chema Mendez. I’m a huge fan of surrealist art and he has an amazing style. I quickly grew to love his work. I ended up collecting from two open editions he released.
Lucid Dreaming by Chema Mendez
I guess I'll see you next lifetime by Chema Mendez
The next artist was Skilux, whom I’ve been a huge fan of for a long time.
I STILL FEEL YOU BESIDE ME by Skilux
When I saw this piece by Lakon, I couldn’t pass it up. He has a lot of cool work on Tezos and ETH.
X01_The Book of The Dead by Lakon
That brings me to my last open edition purchase. There were so many more incredible editions to choose from, but I had to be picky on what I could collect. I minted 𝙼𝚒𝚝𝚘𝚜𝚒𝚜 and was airdropped Meiosis for collecting. The two pieces connect together to make a larger piece. Such beautiful work by 0010.
Towards the end of the year I really started to think and analyze how I was collecting. Trying to figure out a game plan moving forward and being a more productive collector. I’ve minted a lot of random stuff with no thought of the future. Buying stuff that resonates with me or stuff I just enjoy. That’s great and I’m going to keep doing that, but at a much smaller scale. There are so many more expensive or established pieces that I would like to collect and Tezos has gotten incredibly cheap. I see this as a great opportunity to collect grails and other pieces that seem promising long term. I want to get and hold some pieces permanently in my collection, but I also need to think long term financially.
With all that said, below will be the last generative art pieces I collected at the end of the year. Some from artists I really enjoy and other big purchases in established projects.
I was lucky enough to get on the allow list for Imperium. It was created by Mr. Mallory whom has also released free tools for the ETH blockchain, Unix.cx. Really powerful tools to have for free. He’s going to release a few more projects on fxhash in the future. An up and coming artist you should keep an eye out for.
When I was having my best month collecting on ETH in November, I also started collecting a few pieces on my grail list. My first big purchase, besides The Piper. I’ve been a Hevey fan for a long time and Sequence was at the top of my list.
Sequence #7 by Hevey
SMOLSKULL! I hear it’s the PFP in the Tezos space. I lurked on these for a while before I found the right one. I was looking for these two colors in the right combination. The most I’ve paid for a Tezos piece and it was still the floor, probably ngmi.
My last big purchase at the end of the year was de|growth:generations. Jacek Markusiewicz is one of my favorite generative artists. His piece hollow, is the best project on fxhash in my opinion. It’s one I had been chasing, but it kept slipping through my fingers. It has now flew to new highs hitting a 3k Tezos floor. De|growth:generations is one I have been watching for a while. Felt I needed to pull the trigger before the floor started moving. Which my timing worked out for me. The floor has doubled since my purchase. I have a few Mrkswcz pieces on my list to collect. He has so many amazing projects. You can check out my article I wrote about him here.
de|growth:generations by Jacek Markusiewicz
Glad to finally collect from another one of the greats, Ryan Bell.
Dreamcatcher Forest #643 by iRyanBell
No better way to end out the year with a random Zancan drop. Happened to be around when it happened and snagged a couple. My last mint for 2022 minted on New Years night.
It has been a lot of fun writing this series. It was really beneficial to go back through everything I have done this year and reflect on it. Thanks for reading.
Here are all the links for the 3 articles in this series.
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What a great run you had, love it