In about a month’s time, you’ll be able to be among the first fans to purchase, sell, and trade from William Shatner’s new line of digital trading cards. The cards are emblazoned with images from Shatner’s life, handpicked by the Shat himself, and will initially sell for about $1 per card, with multi-packs available. More than just files on your computer, these digital assets are backed by the WAX Blockchain, meaning there is an entire infrastructure ensuring that your card is the real deal. Along with the card’s image (front and back) these collectibles include ownership history, price history, and more. And, you’ll be able to show off your collection, sell cards, and trade your cards with other fans.
A little something for everyone, guaranteed unique
Whether you’re a completist who’s gotta have em all, a collector looking for that certain card to trade for, or an opportunist looking to make some money, this digital card platform looks to be a lot of fun. Plus, we are insanely curious to learn more about the images that will be on these cards. All we know is that they are curated by William Shatner himself who, in true Shatner fashion, has chosen a number of iconic moments from his life, some of which are quite personal to him. Wax.io, the company behind the initial card offering, told TrekMovie that we can expect to see some Star Trek-related cards, including one with William Shatner hugging Leonard Nimoy—sure to be one of the most sought after cards in the set.
“They’re odd pieces — the detritus of my life, like leaving the dust of a comet behind me.”
— William Shatner in an interview with Cointelegraph Magazine
He’s even picked out his childhood dental X-rays! Shatner told Cointelegraph Magazine how he picked out the images, saying: “Even down to an old joke… I have these dental records, and the joke is, this is something I can get my teeth into. It’s just an X-ray of a tooth. But it’s my tooth!”
While multiple cards will be printed with the same image (and some images rarer than others), you can be sure each individual card is unique. That’s something that drew Shatner to the WAX blockchain.
We’re unique. Each individual is unique. And the older you get… the more people you meet… the more empathy you have for the difficulty of living a good life. I believe that there is a uniqueness to all life — dogs are unique, horses are unique, they are individuals and they need to be appreciated for that. Putting something on a blockchain is forever. We’ve come up with a variety of things that are uniquely me, and it will be up there on WAX.”
All in all, there will be about 90,000 unique cards offered. Here is a sample of the Shat dressed as a Ghostbuster. He’s done everything.
Redeem cards for real-life autographed collectibles
To sweeten the deal, some cards, dubbed “golden collectibles”, will be redeemable for real-life items signed by William Shatner, and one lucky person will be able to redeem a real-life autographed action figure of the actor. These cards will be very limited; WAX.io told TrekMovie that there will be “dozens” of redeemable cards.
What’s the deal with the WAX Blockchain?
Shatner’s cards will be sold through the WAX Blockchain, an infrastructure for trading digital assets, but… what does that even mean, and why should you care? In a nutshell, it means that the cards are guaranteed authentic, and information about the card’s history (it’s metadata) always lives with the card. Think of the blockchain like giant spreadsheet in the sky. This is a sky where users can exchange and buy litecoin, bitcoin, and also cards. Any time a card is sold, purchased, or traded, it gets logged on that spreadsheet. Since the blockchain is public, all transactions can be verified, and fake items cannot be added. Transactions, of course, are anonymized, meaning your privacy is guaranteed along with the veracity of your purchase.
Data for William Shatner cards on the blockchain includes:
- Detailed product specifications for each card, including the date it was created, its rarity, images of the card, proof of its authenticity and more. With this information, collectors know exactly which cards they are trading – no guesswork, no need to trust or verify other traders.
- Comprehensive ownership records that show who traded the card and when. Since everyone can see its full ownership history, no one can ever fake ownership of a card.
- Complete trade and sale history, including how much money was paid for the cards and when. No one can ever fake previous sale prices or dates.
You don’t need to worry about any of this in order to participate. You simply sign up for an account and purchase cards with your credit card. Over $100 million worth of digital items have been traded over the WAX Blockchain, with other card sets by companies like Topps proving extremely popular.
Tell me more!
We don’t yet know the exact release date of William Shatner’s card set, but WAX.io told TrekMovie that they should debut by the end of July. To learn more and sign-up to get notified the second the cards go live, check out shatner.wax.io.
Keep up to date with all the new Star Trek merchandise here at TrekMovie.
Hmm…somebody needed a paycheck…
I doubt Shatner needs the money; I’m guessing it’s the attention he wants. Shatner has always craved great gobs of attention. I guess most actors do, but Shatner’s dial has always gone up to 11. It was annoying when he was younger, but now that he’s 88, it makes him a genuine marvel. :-)
I’m not even sure if it’s about craving attention, either. I think he’s afraid to slow down. You slow down and, well, you slow down…
Shat that!
He likes to keep busy. The man does not need the money.
Egocentric, narcissistic… absolutely terrific! Bill can fart new ways to make money :)
This is pretty awesome, cause it’s going to be a pseudo-hit. And I can’t really think of too many others (his age, demographic, fan base, ect.) that could pull it off, hats off to the shat,
You really hate William Shatner that much do you. Calm down Doug, let him have fun. He is a celebrity, that’s what they do for a living.
Don’t think he’s hating. Irony.
That’s not hate. Doug is a fan.
Honestly, this was pretty much my initial response. I love this! It’s so delightfully bizarre and so truly Shatner. I’m definitely going to buy some cards in the initial offering.
Amazing. God bless his energy. He is almost 90 years old and he has learned thru the very good and the very bad, how to be very successful, how to live your live in full.
My opinion has been that the ego is a front. Its hiding that the man is just… afraid to die. I get the sense that while he actually finds a lot of his projects fun, it’s more a way of not having to deal with the great beyond. As one great philosopher might say “that Shat is no more”… or something like that.
But in all seriousness, this can be a crippling fear that can lead a person to do wierd things sometimes and it can be a very stressful fear to placate. I personly am a Christian who knows exactly what I’m getting to when im done on this earth, and I still have some small fear of dying. Imagine what Shat is going through.
For better or for worse (and it can go either way), there’s nobody like Shatner!
Reminds me of the time that he auctioned off his kidney stone during Boston Legal. I don’t have any interest in this otherwise and don’t really understand it. But it’s Shatner so it’s weird and fun.
Not a very flattering Ghostbuster pic. Some new Shatner PR marking schtick is kinda like a fatal car wreck you drive by. You don’t want to look, but you can’t help yourself…..
Boy, anything for a buck, eh?
At least he isn’t peddling condoms….
Wait for it, Phil.
The technology behind this is fascinating and good luck to the company producing it. I will follow the company for a while to see how it develops.
Shatner is a curious fellow. Iconic in TOS and tremendously entertaining in some later
TV roles yet some of the roles are also cringeworthy. At a Trek convention in the early 90’s that I attended he was the headline guest yet I was amazed at how boring he was. Few in the audience seemed to even be listening to him as he joked, told long personal stories or even answered questions he would pose to the crowd. It was the one time I saw him in person and I had trouble believing this was the guy who I thought when I was a child was hero and a great leader. I was reminded of how I’ve heard the advice of be careful when you meet your hero’s, you may not like what you find.
I was sitting close to the stage and later accidentally stood near him as he walked by around the vendors area. I saw he had gained a lot of weight and felt a bit ashamed of myself for thinking about it. After all he has been loved afar for years by myself and means so by so many.
Then as he slowly turned around looking at what vendors were selling, my eyes locked on his hair. I had heard the derogatory toupee comments through the years but just ignored them. At that point it was after his stage appearance and it was a humid hot day. The air conditioning was very mild in the large area. I could see a definite line belaying how the hair texture changed on either side of his head. Even worse was the severe line of hair at the top of his forehead which was as straight as a ruler. I was in shock wondering why nobody working with him, in hair and makeup, or otherwise, would let him make a formal public appearance in that condition.
I realized everyone is human, no matter how larger than life they may seem. We all have good and bad days and hopefully we just do the best we can at the time.
Now, why am I posting all this?
The photo in this digital trading card just “reads” his hairpiece. The straight up hair lines on the side of his head leading up to the curiously fluffier top. The front symmetrically going from the center to the sides. As even as a toothbrush. Shatner has access to the finest photographers and makeup professionals in their fields. Now I understand there will be childhood photos and candid behind the scenes photos of all kinds. But why would he choose a photo from his professional acting catalog that just shows how flawed his trying to look young can be. Some of the worst photos showing his toupee are promotional photos from STTMP. His need to look young can sometimes be so painful to see. I wouldn’t want to pay money to continue to see his awkwardness in that need.
Sorry for a few typos in my posting and I went on too long. All this quarantine time has me thinking about the past and what’s mattered to me. I’ll keep postings shorter.
.. are you celebrating the man or need to demean the fact he wears a hairpiece? I’ve seen him in person twice, even stood just a few feet away as he received his star on the walk of fame (that’s another story) and chatted with him on the set of TJ Hooker where he stopped production to do so. I suppose I have seen a man that some fans don’t because I guess they felt jilted by him once. He tries his best to live up to the persona the fans expect him to be when in reality he’s just an actor who played a part in a low rated, yet well written TV series that just happened to be watched in reruns like so many other old shows
I like Shatner (how can I not, he’s from my hometown!) but this is a little bit too random… How does Ghostbusters represent anything from his life?
I can think of one thing, but it’s wildly insensitive…..
It doesn’t. That’s the point.
The Shat … I love him, but he’s like a snake oil peddler!
The “kids” would call this “thirsty”
Wait, what?? 90K cards? That’s what I get for scrolling too fast….even digitally, just how do you pose Shatner 90K different ways…..and why would I pay for that??
Quote from the article: While multiple cards will be printed with the same image (and some images rarer than others), you can be sure each individual card is unique.
So there will be 90K cards in total, but not 90K different images.Let’s say they do 100 different images, then they could sell some of them 5000 times, others 1000 times and make some even rarer.
Still I don’t really see the appeal. It is essentially an image file on your computer that you can trade. What are you going to do with it? Watch it on your screen? Print it on paper? You can do that with any image file, you don’t need something with a certificate of authenticity for that.
Paramount missed out on not having Shatner appear in Beyond (in a proper guest star role so obviously a different story wouldve been required) imagine the tweets hed had made to his 3m followers..all that free publicity for the movie, shatner bombarding the tweeter airwaves non stop for a full year.. ‘i am in this movie! you HAVE to see this movie! if you are a star trek trek fan or a fan of SciFi or just like to be entertained you will LOVE this movie!’
Would not have made one bit of difference. The only place that still believes Shatner is a big screen attraction is in Shatners head. Shatners draw these days is apparently peddling digital trading cards (glad I’m not an invertor in that) and reliving the glory days at conventions.
“Keeping busy.”
We laugh while The Shat watches all those direct deposits clear.
Had to scroll through a hundred or so “sponsored” links to get to comments. Anyone else getting those? Very annoying.
I’ve been noticing that as well.
.. milk it, Bill! Milk it for all its worth!
..I still say the day this man passes should be a worldwide day of morning! Classic Trek is still playing all over the world and dignitaries, world leaders, even the pope should acknowledge it with proclamations everywhere! Heck, he’ll probably continue in history as Elvis, MJ, JFK, Lincoln, Reagan MLK, The Beetles! He’s probably even more popular than the Stones or Elton! The list is long! Long Live The Shat!
Digital Trading Cards…. I dont get it.
Can you actually trade them? Who buys them from you?
Apparently, the company only produces a limited number of unique cards. Once all of those are sold, anybody who wants one has to buy from someone who already has one. No idea whether there actually is a market for that. It doesn’t sound appealing to me but that’s just me.
There are a markets where you will be able to trade the cards. The collection is based on Blockchain so it cant be copied/duplicated and you can redeem some cards for special and exclusive gifts!