TIME Magazine Launches Community NFT Collection TIMEPieces

Iconic news magazine TIME has made another move into the non-fungible token (NFT) ecosystem with the launch of its own community collection.

TIMEPieces features work from 40 artists which have collaborated with the publication to produce this community NFT collection.

The collection went live on Sept 23 in a “blind drop” consisting of 4,676 pieces which are now up for sale on NFT marketplace OpenSea. Each one started at 0.1 ETH (around $300) but they are already generating much more on secondary markets.

According to the announcement, owners of TIMEPieces will be able to connect their digital wallets to the website to receive unlimited access until TIME’s 100th Anniversary in 2023.

Foray into NFTs

Artists for the genesis collection have come from a group organized by TIME Creative Director D.W. Pine. Pieces range from photography to illustrations to paintings to animations, and many artists have produced covers for TIME in the past, it added.

“TIMEPieces is our latest foray into NFTs, this time with the goal of also fostering community, loyalty and rewards.”

It added that the release marks the first time a major media brand has “taken on a Web3 approach toward building community and using this technology as an innovative extension of our current digital subscription efforts.”

The TIMEPieces collection will also be turned into a hardcover book available this holiday season, it added.

Secondary markets were already seeing whopping gains in prices for the pieces. The most expensive one called “the CONTROL ROOM” was currently priced at 4,269 ETH, or around $13 million, on OpenSea.

At the time of writing the NFT marketplace was reporting that there has been a trading volume of 6,600 ETH for the collection so far.

In mid-August, TIME Magazine teamed up with the Cool Cats NFT project to launch a collection of 400 NFTs.

NFT ecosystem outlook

NFT fever has cooled down a bit since daily sales were topping $267 million in late August.  The current daily sales figure for Sept 23 was $27 million across 84,000 NFTs according to the market analytics website Nonfungible.

According to CryptoSlam, the most popular NFT collection over the past seven days is Axie Infinity which has seen $106 million in sales for the week. Art Blocks is the second most popular collection with $33 million sold for the period.