A collection of NFTs featuring anthropomorphic deer netted its creator almost $600,000 within hours of being minted.

In March, Welsh artist Ashley Crossland dropped 7,200 of his Stag Alliance NFTs, a series he had spent thousands of hours creating outside of his day job at a design agency. Each stag has a name and is built from over 400 traits ranging from epic fantasy to steampunk to, well, downright silly – Bluedew of Domence appears dressed as a Victorian gentleman with lit horns and Lilac Larry as a dude surfer in a wooded retreat.

“I chose the deer because of its strong and positive connotations in many cultures around the world,” Crossland told Artnet News. “The traits reflect the cultures of many parts of history and culture. The juxtapositions represent the wild and unpredictable nature of the NFT space.

Within hours, the NFTs, which are based on Cardano and each cost around $85 mint, sold out, with secondary sales now pushing the price floor to around $140.

King Cunning is one of over 7,000 humanoid deer. Photo courtesy of Ashley Crossland.

Crossland fell in love with the NFT space during the pandemic and started collecting in 2020. His deer sketches were positively received online, but he wanted to build a world rather than just mint and so partnered with Jimmi Sandham, a friend from college, who created a whole mythical universe, Elderworld. “The lore gives meaning to all the characters and it enhances their collection,” Crossland said.

In short, Elderworld imagines a herd of deer brought to earth in 2519 BCE by a mad witch. In its attempt to take the land from humans, the stag is endowed with supreme magic, wisdom, and artifacts from all eras. War duly ensues between the Stag Alliance and the humans who see the devil at work in their horned adversaries.

Crossland and his team are developing a complete gamified experience for collectors, including on mobile. Photo courtesy of Ashley Crossland.

It’s the thoroughness of the project’s history that seems to have piqued the interest of collectors. The hope is to go beyond the silo of NFT collectors and connect with fantasy fans, in part by posting stories to Amazon and Apple, including audio versions for those who don’t like to read.

Despite the project’s early success, Stag Alliance is wary of some of the pitfalls of other large-scale collectible projects, such as creating connected tokens, incentivizing collectors to hold NFTs, and artificially inflating the value of coins. an NFT collection, a tactic called floor sweeping.

“We want people to own and use our NFTs,” Stag Alliance wrote on a Web page explaining its market philosophy. “We focus on real demand, not superficial and unsustainable or illogical value.”

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