When the history books are written, and the documentaries are made on the formative days of NFTs, Jimmy McNelis, aka j1mmy.eth, will hold a special place in history as a creator, as a passionate advocate, and for having one of the greatest NFT collections of all time.
An NFT OG who started his journey on Dec. 5, 2017, when he purchased his first CryptoKitty, the 45-year-old American is also the founder of Avastars, an early PFP project from February 2020 that set the scene for intellectual property (IP) rights being given to holders.
That was popularized by Bored Ape Yacht Club and the 2021 PFP mania that saw IP rights for holders becoming the standard for most projects. Avastars was also a pioneer in putting the project on-chain, inspired by Autoglyphs, which minted 10 months earlier.
J1mmy also has an almost unrivaled NFT collection worth around $150 million at the peak. The astonishing collection includes eight Autoglyphs, 19 Chromie Squiggles, 30 Bored Apes, five CryptoPunks, 11 Gazers, 61 Meebits, 114 CyberBrokers and a Twin Flame by Justin Aversano.
“At its peak it was about $150 million. Whether or not that was actually liquid but $150 million was on one of the wallet portfolio sites. Today, it’s probably 1/10th of that,” says j1mmy.
“One thing that I maybe don’t do a good enough job really talking about is the collector aspect of my NFT journey and the art collector that I am as well. I believe that I have one of the best art collections in existence.”
Autoglyph #190 by Larva Labs – collected by j1mmy
CryptoPunk #7145 – collected by j1mmy
Chromie Squiggle #584 by Snowfro – collected by j1mmy
“I see a lot of funds out there trying to recreate essentially what I already have and what other people already have as well, but to a lesser extent. I used to have 30 Autoglyphs but still have held onto eight of them. If you use those as an example, if a fund owns one single Autoglyph, that’s considered pretty significant.”
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