So I decided to try my first whaling into an NFT project.

The current project was put together by the same team that has run the successful Trains of the Century project, which has been a nice and steady grinding income source for me for a few months now into 2022. I signed onto that project late and missed the early entry for the station owners, so now it would be prohibitively expensive to jump in late. Now, Hello Coaster came along and I've got a second chance at a new entry. This time I bit the bullet and jumped in after thinking about it all night.

The entry cost for me was a notable $125. Not too bad but not cheap either. After some moving around of coins, converting and pulling together enough wax, I got onto NeftyBlocks and scored mint #91. As it turned out, I was extremely lucky; the original mint of 500 was cut off to 100 in a sudden change the same morning by the project management to not overflood the run up and sour the project prematurely. Now why did I go through all this trouble in the first place?

The entry membership being a parklord is supposed to give me access to couple of unique benefits, ergo the value for early investing. It's a common strategy to generate significant cash flow for an NFT project at the pre-launch point before the first packs come out. Essentially, I get a few things:

• I get to be in a fancy distinct club in the Discord channel (woooo!). Oh joy.
• I get a monthly drop of new park design NFTs, one every month. These allow me to do some type of mining, which creates options for griding income or I could sell them on the secondary market.
• I get an automatic whitelisting and discount price on new upcoming pack drops before they go on public sale (okay, saves me a few bucks if I keep investing).

The big ticket, I assume, is that some point being a park lord, I get income from my ride being used by the public, also probably mining off my park for a lesser income level. This would be consistent with the Trains model mentioned above, and it would pay me income long-term as the project continues and grows, ideally. (Author Correction - So it turns out, at least the way things read in the White Paper and discussion, the game is more of a solo player than interacting with other players visiting parks. I hope they change that; the Trains model makes a lot more sense overall.)

There's a lot of risk here, no question. This project could completely flop and burn. There's plenty of negative chatter right now in the Discord channel, generally by characters looking for a quick flip profit and no long-term commitment. I'm generally not that type. I'll stick around for the long-term reward, which could be my critical mistake. I don't know yet, and it's way too early to judge. I can only go off the barometer of the team's previous project and how it continues to grow, hoping for the same.

The other thing is, I've learned being a whale is a lonely place. People crap on you for making high risk choices, but then they get pissed at you when it works out, being jealous of your gains. Interesting, psychologically.