South China Morning Post creates the first historical NFT

The NFT collection sells out in two hours

During the weekend, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) portal announced the launch of an interesting series of NFTs called ‘1997 Premium Series’.

This will be the first of three launches of Artifacts series, historically active Nfts such as news, newspaper covers, infographics, audios and images that pretend to capture their historical context and meaning with a smart contract.

 Artifacts are collectible NFTs from the  118 years of archives of SCMP and the metadata standard for selecting ARTIFACTs is developed by a council of interdisciplinary experts.

 How these assets work

The NFTs will be available for purchase in the form of mystery boxes containing random packs of five ARTIFACTS, presented as trading cards with different levels of rarity: «common, uncommon, rare, super rare, and legendary». 

The collection 1997 premium series includes 1300 mystery boxes. Among the Artifacts are momentous events, such as the ceremony of Hong Kong from British to Chinese rule, the asian financial crisis, and the death of Princess Diana.

Through Artifacts users can participate in an important global innovation that is the first NFT project dedicated to historical assets and elevate the value and exposure of their archives and collections.

 How to buy artifacts

The 1997 Premium Series was available March 14, and users were able to open the box on Tuesday 15th. For this first release SCMP partnered exclusively with Blocto, therefore only with Blocto wallet users can buy and store ARTIFACTS.

Each Mystery Box is priced at FUSD 97 and includes five ARTIFACTS. 

For now, SCMP has said that this is the first of three expected releases: Base Series, Premium Series, and Thematic Drops.  Base Series is scheduled for the month of April; while Thematic drops will not be released until the third quarter of this year.

Also SCMP announced that ARTIFACT Marketplace will be launched in the second quarter of this year; the platform will serve specifically for the sale, marketing and exhibition of all historical NFTs.

 Future prospects

SCMP seeks to extend journalism to decentralized ownership for the first time and build a community and ecosystem built around preserving history on the blockchain.

His vision is for all ‘keepers of history’ includes museums, academic institutions, cultural organizations, art galleries, archivists, governments, and others.