10 Types of NFTs to Know About Before You Buy One

The ten common types of NFTs are collectibles, sports moments, artwork, avatars, game items, event tickets, music, fashion, domain names and virtual land. An NFT is a token that is individually unique, so each one records who owns one specific item. Before you buy one, it helps to know about each kind and what an owner actually gets.

• The standard: ERC-721, an Ethereum standard for NFTs, is listed as created on 24 January 2018 on the Ethereum Improvement Proposals site.
• Art: Beeple’s Everydays: The First 5,000 Days sold at Christie’s on 11 March 2021, as The Art Newspaper reported that day.
• Avatars: CryptoPunks launched in June 2017 and Bored Apes in April 2021, each as a set of 10,000, according to Larva Labs and Yuga Labs.
• Fashion: Nike announced its purchase of RTFKT on 13 December 2021, according to Nike’s release, and RTFKT announced its wind-down on 2 December 2024, as Decrypt reported.

  What is an NFT?

  An NFT is a token that is individually unique, which is why each one can stand for one specific item. According to ethereum.org, each NFT has different properties and is provably scarce, and ownership of an asset is publicly verifiable on Ethereum. A coin works the other way round: every unit is the same as the next one.

  The ERC-721 proposal says these tokens can represent ownership over digital or physical assets, and that you must track the ownership of each one separately. The token is the record. What an owner gets beyond the record depends on the seller’s terms, which is why the ten kinds in the table behave so differently.

  Type	Example	Dated fact	Source
  Collectibles and trading cards	Disney Pinnacle digital pins	Listed as a collectibles product on 6 October 2026	Dapper Labs
  Sports moments	NBA Top Shot	Reported open to consumers worldwide on 2 October 2020	Ledger Insights
  Artwork	Beeple, Everydays: The First 5,000 Days	Sold on 11 March 2021 for $69.3 million with fees	The Art Newspaper
  Avatars (PFPs)	CryptoPunks	Launched June 2017 as 10,000 characters	Larva Labs
  Game items	Items in games built on tokens	Steam’s rules, read on 6 October 2026, list apps that issue or allow exchange of them as not to be published	Steamworks
  Virtual land	The Sandbox LAND	166,464 LANDs in total on 6 October 2026	The Sandbox docs
  Event tickets	Ticketmaster token-gated sales	Token-gated sales announced 27 March 2023, first sale for a 10,000-token fan club	Ticketmaster
  Music	Kings of Leon, When You See Yourself	Reported 3 March 2021, album package token priced at $50	CNBC
  Fashion	RTFKT	Acquisition announced by Nike 13 December 2021, wind-down announced 2 December 2024	Nike, Decrypt
  Domain names	ENS .eth names	$5 a year for 5 or more characters, $160 for 4, $640 for 3, on 6 October 2026	ENS support page

  Market prices move and are shown for reference, not as a promise.

  Collectibles, trading cards and sports moments

  Collectible tokens are digital cards, pins and video highlights that you hold in a wallet instead of a binder. If you have ever tracked down a rare Pokémon card and then worried about storing it safely, that is the appeal: no shelf and no shipping box. The catch is that the collection then depends on the platform that runs it.

  Ledger Insights reported on 2 October 2020 that Dapper Labs, the company behind NBA Top Shot, had opened the app to consumers worldwide, after a closed beta that made direct sales of almost $1 million.

  As of 6 October 2026, the Dapper Labs site lists 1.6 million collectors and more than $1.2 billion in sales for NBA Top Shot, with Disney Pinnacle, a digital pin collecting and trading experience, beside it. Those are the company’s own figures, not an independent count. Our NBA Top Shot write-up goes through the platform in more detail.

  How do artwork and avatar NFTs differ?

  Artwork tokens usually stand for one piece, while avatar tokens come as large sets of generated characters made to be used as profile pictures. The sale people remember is Beeple’s Everydays: The First 5,000 Days, which according to The Art Newspaper sold at Christie’s on 11 March 2021 for $60.25 million, or $69.3 million with fees. The paper also called it the first standalone NFT artwork sold by an auction house.

  A well-known early avatar set is CryptoPunks. Larva Labs launched it in June 2017 as 10,000 pixel characters, let anyone with an Ethereum wallet claim one for free, and says all of them were claimed within eight days. Yuga Labs says Bored Ape Yacht Club launched in April 2021 with 10,000 tokens, each a membership pass to a digital club. Our Bored Ape guide covers that collection in more detail.

  Do game items and virtual land work everywhere?

  No, a game item or a plot of virtual land only does something inside the game or world that recognises it, and Steam is one store that does not accept games built that way. The ethereum.org page lists “ownable items for games” among the uses of NFTs. Valve’s Steamworks onboarding page, which we read on 6 October 2026, lists applications built on blockchain technology that issue or allow exchange of cryptocurrencies or NFTs under what you shouldn’t publish on Steam.

  Virtual land follows the same logic. As of 6 October 2026, the Sandbox documentation lists 166,464 LANDs in total, and the Decentraland documentation says each of its parcels takes up 16×16 meters and that the supply of LAND tokens is limited. A parcel is a location on one platform’s map, so it means little outside that platform. Our piece on sneakers in the metaverse looks at the footwear side of these spaces.

  What happened to fashion NFTs like RTFKT?

  RTFKT, the digital fashion studio that Nike announced it had acquired on 13 December 2021, announced its wind-down on 2 December 2024. Nike’s release described RTFKT as a brand making collectibles that merge culture and gaming, founded in 2020, and said the terms of the deal would not be disclosed.

  Decrypt tied the wind-down to falling prices for the studio’s collections, most of all Clone X, its flagship profile picture set.

  It also reported that .Swoosh, Nike’s own virtual creations platform, launched in November 2022 on Polygon and, according to a .Swoosh blog post that Decrypt cited on 2 December 2024, would not be launching any more NFT collections for now. We tell the story in Nike shutting down RTFKT, the first drop in Nike RTFKT, and the wider category in NFT sneakers.

  Music and event tickets use the token as a pass

  A music token bundles a release, a perk or both with proof that you hold it, and a ticket token is a pass that a seller can check. CNBC reported on 3 March 2021 that Kings of Leon would offer their album When You See Yourself as an NFT, an album package with a vinyl and a digital download for a token priced at $50, sold through YellowHeart over a two-week window.

  Tickets work on the same idea. Ticketmaster announced token-gated sales on 27 March 2023, which let artists reward holders of specific NFTs with access to things such as presales, prime seats, concert experiences and even travel packages. The first sale was for Avenged Sevenfold and gave holders of its Deathbats Club tokens, a collection of 10,000 that Ticketmaster described as fan club membership cards, first access to shows in New York and Los Angeles.

  Domain names are tokens you have to renew

  A domain name token is a readable name, such as an ENS .eth name, that sits in your wallet instead of in a registrar’s account. The ENS documentation says a name can be transferred like any other ERC721 token, and its support page says the NFT shows up in your wallet once registration completes.

  According to the ENS support page, which we read on 6 October 2026, registration costs $5 a year for names of five or more characters, $160 for four and $640 for three, paid in ETH with network fees on top.

  The same page gives the minimum registration as 28 days with no maximum, and the ENS documentation says that after the 90-day grace period following expiry a name goes into a 21-day premium auction. You hold the name for the period you paid for, not for good.

  What does an NFT buyer actually get?

  A buyer gets the token, and what they may do with the content linked to it is subject to the rights the seller or creator has set. That is how OpenSea’s terms of service, last updated on 27 August 2026, put it, and they add that you bear sole responsibility for verifying the legitimacy, authenticity and legality of what you buy.

  CNBC reported on 2 May 2024 that the Bored Ape Yacht Club floor price, which it defined as the lowest price an NFT in a collection will sell for, was about 13.395 ETH on 1 May 2024 according to OpenSea, against a peak of 128 ETH on 1 May 2022 according to NFTPriceFloor.

  On 16 September 2024 the SEC’s order against Flyfish Club, a private members-only restaurant, had it agree to a $750,000 civil penalty over what the SEC described as an unregistered offering of crypto asset securities in the form of NFTs. Our guides on how to buy NFTs, what OpenSea is and NFT terms cover the mechanics.

  Is an NFT the same thing as a cryptocurrency?

  No. CNBC’s report of 3 March 2021 noted that, unlike most virtual currencies, you couldn’t exchange one NFT for another the way you would dollars or gold bars, and that each one is unique and can’t be duplicated.

  Where does an NFT live once you own it?

  In your wallet. The ENS support page says the token shows up there after registration, while ethereum.org says ownership of an asset is publicly verifiable on Ethereum, so anyone can check who holds it.