More than three years after its debut offering, VeeFriends has agreed to a new multi-year partnership with Topps, the companies announced Thursday.
Details for any future products or release dates weren’t made immediately available.
The deal will make its official debut Thursday at New York Comic Con, where the VeeFriends booth plans to hand out promo cards from Topps Chrome VeeFriends.
Images of the promo cards provided to cllct show the “Notorious Ninja” character that includes true-color parallels and what appears to be a Superfactor.
Vaynerchuk, who is best known as a social-media influencer and CEO of creative media agency VaynerX, first launched VeeFriends in 2021 as a collection of 10,255 NFTs featuring 268 hand-drawn characters.
Vaynerchuk later partnered with Fanatics to release a physical trading card set alongside the launch of Fanatics Collectibles’ zerocool brand in 2022. The Series 1 launch with zerocool included physical cards for all 268 characters as well as 15 new characters.
The new deal is Topps’ latest push into the non-sports market, following an expanded deal with Disney in September to allow for global distribution of brands such as Marvel, Pixar and more. VeeFriends joins Marvel, Star Wars, Disney and Garbage Pail Kids as key non-sports categories under the Topps brand.
“We think this is an underdeveloped market in terms of non-sports collectors, so we’re really excited about it,” Fanatics Collectibles SVP of global licensing and partnerships Kelvin Smith told cllct. “VeeFriends is at the top of the list, and we think fandom is not just specific to sports. Obviously, VeeFriends has a massive following, and we think we can tap into that again.”
Though VeeFriends hasn’t resonated with many traditional sports card collectors, the brand’s popularity has been undeniable among other hobbyists. To date, the original VeeFriends NFT project has accounted for more than $255 million in sales, including a $503,672 sale for the Empathy Elephant more than two years ago.
The trading card set has seen incredible success on the secondary market as well, with just 1,000 boxes created and only 800 available to the public. Sealed boxes sold to the public at dutch auction for $2,150 per box, but later fetched as much as $17,000 on the secondary market.
The highest public sale for an individual physical trading card is the $20,400 paid for an Empathy Elephant PSA 10 featuring a DNA 10 Vaynerchuk autograph in 2022.
According to VeeFriends president Andy Krainak, the brand’s success can be tied to Vaynerchuk’s direct involvement and passion for the project.
“For the most part, we really only enter spaces through Gary’s stewardship and leadership in an authentic way,” Krainak told cllct. “So, whether it’s trading cards, which are near and dear to Gary’s heart, or NFTs, or we’re now entering more into the comic book space, we take a lot of time to try and learn and really understand the space to be genuine and authentic.
"We want to make sure that our characters are coming to life in that sector or medium in a really authentic and original way.”
Ben Burrows is a reporter and editor for cllct.