The Trump family is back with another round of NFTs. Just two months after former U.S. President Donald Trump released a second batch of his NFT trading cards—which torpedoed the value of the first set in the process—his wife Melania has launched a set of NFTs inspired by the upcoming Independence Day holiday.
Melania Trump’s Solana-based NFTs—called “The 1776 Collection”—lean on familiar American imagery, using photos of landmarks like the Statue of Liberty and Mount Rushmore affixed to animated placards. Each digital collectible sells for $50 apiece, spanning seven designs for a total run of 3,500 NFTs.
The NFTs are being sold through a website called USA Collectibles, and Melania Trump's Twitter account retweeted the company’s tweet about the sale this morning. The website also offers “POTUS TRUMP” NFTs featuring photos of the former president and first lady.
The 1776 Collection
Six Limited Edition Collectables
Available Exclusively at https://t.co/kAenWUwxQ1#USAmemorabilia #NFTs#The1776Collection #IndependenceDay pic.twitter.com/euYySvvRcD— USAmemorabilia (@USAmemorabilia) June 29, 2023
Although not stated on the actual NFT website, a Fox News story suggests that an undisclosed portion of sales will benefit Fostering the Future, a part of Melania Trump’s broader Be Best resource program focused on helping foster children.
The Trumps have amassed a considerable history in the NFT space over the past two years. Melania Trump was the first of the duo to release her own NFT in December 2021, with representatives of Solana Labs—the startup behind the Solana blockchain—clarifying to Decrypt at the time that it was not a “Solana-led initiative.”
She released more NFTs in 2022 before Donald Trump launched his popular digital trading cards collection, with 45,000 total NFTs on Ethereum scaling network Polygon that were sold for $99 apiece. Each NFT was tied to potential special perks, such as dinner with the ex-president or an invite to a group Zoom meeting with him.
Although widely mocked, the NFTs sold out within 24 hours and were the talk of both the NFT world and mainstream observers, causing the resale value to surge. At their peak, the Trump cards started at a price of over $1,000 apiece on secondary marketplaces, and collectively the NFTs have generated over $20 million worth of sales to date.
Trump then released 47,000 more NFTs in April for $99 apiece, and the launch of the second collection caused the value of the original NFTs to fall dramatically. Currently, the original Trump digital trading cards start at $185 worth of ETH on the secondary market, while the second set starts at nearly half the mint price—about $54 worth of ETH.