MINECON 2011 capecreeper face

The facts

Event date

18 November 2011

Venue

Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas

Attendance

4,500 people, from 24 countries

Tickets

$99 early bird, then $139

Cape delivered

10-11 October 2011

Edition

Java Edition only

What happened

MINECON 2011 was the first official Minecraft convention, and the only one that doubled as a launch party. Minecraft had been in public development for over two years; at Mandalay Bay, in front of 4,500 people, Notch pushed Java Edition 1.0.0 live and the game was finally, officially, released.

The cape design was put to a community vote. The creeper design took 42% and became the MINECON 2011 cape. The runner-up, on 33%, was not thrown away: it came back a year later as the MINECON 2012 cape.

Capes landed in attendee accounts on 10-11 October, several weeks before the doors opened, which is why the cape date and the event date do not match in most archives.

Why collectors care

It is the oldest event cape in the game and the only one tied to the release of Minecraft itself. The attendee pool was 4,500 accounts, a decade and a half ago, and many of those accounts have since been abandoned, lost or migrated away. That combination of a tiny fixed supply and natural attrition is what keeps the 2011 cape at the top of almost every collector list.

A cape cannot be detached from the account that earned it. There is no trade, no gift, no transfer. The only way the 2011 cape moves is if the whole account moves with it, which is the market CNKT works in.