One year-old StarStock, a trading card marketplace, is getting a big influx of cash courtesy of a group of investors that includes a couple of NBA players.
The company announced Monday that it had raised $1.3 million in seed funding “to fuel the company’s growth plans.” Participants in the round include NBA all-star Kevin Durant and long-time veteran guard Matthew Dellavedova, Rich Kleiman of Thirty Five Ventures, FanDuel co-founders, Nigel and Lesley Eccles, Jeremy Levine of Founder’s First Fund and A.J. Vaynerchuk, co-founder of VaynerSports.
StarStock allows users to submit cards to the platform, where they are stored in a secure, centralized vault. Buyers can then make trades at scale, gaining immediate ownership of the cards, which remain in the company’s possession. It’s a stock market-style approach founded just over a year ago by three collectors looking for a new way to buy and sell current era cards in what was becoming a booming market.
Both graded and ungraded cards can be bought and sold. Raw cards are scored on a three level scale before being placed into inventory. Sellers then set sale prices and buyers make offers. Buyers take instant ownership while cards remain in the vault; StarStock takes a 5% fee from sellers. At any time, owners can choose to have cards from their digital collection sent to them for a smaller fee.
“StarStock’s growth has been astounding. In the space of a few weeks it has gone from zero to processing thousands of cards every single day. The industry is seeing dramatic changes with sneaker heads jumping into sports cards, and StarStock is at the forefront of that trend,” said Nigel Eccles, Co-founder and CEO at Flick and Co-founder of FanDuel.
“As a life-long sports fan, it’s been incredible to watch how tech has changed the way we trade memorabilia and created a revamped culture around trading cards,” said Rich Kleiman, Co-founder of Thirty Five Ventures. “There is an immense opportunity to take sports memorabilia to the masses, and we are looking forward to StarStock leveraging smart engineering, user-friendly UI, and an immense database to make trading memorabilia accessible to everyone.”
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