Alt — Invest in sports cards just like stocks

This is something @garyvee would be into. Love the concept and the timing is great w/ the recent hype on cards. I can see some integration (or competition) with StockX and things like Grailed in the future.

When I first learned about Alt I was excited about the opportunity of converting my passion for collecting sports cards into *investing* in them. Alt makes this possible with Alt Value which allows you to understand the value of your cards and track them over time. Their exchange makes it easy to find investment-grade assets and transact securely, with some of the lowest fees for sellers in the market. With Alt, sports fans have the ability to invest in the players they love and athletes can invest in themselves. Seven Seven Six is thrilled to lead Alt’s Series A and help make investing in sports cards as accessible as investing in stocks.

I've been using Alt for a few months and it's seriously one of my favorite new products in the last year. Anyone who's collected sports cards, sneakers, wine, or any other illiquid asset knows the pain of guessing at current values, hacking together a spreadsheet, or trying janky apps to track your collection and the value of it. Alt makes tracking your sports card collection just like looking at your Robinhood account, and it feels like magic. So excited for everyone else to get to experience it!

After seeing a Wayne Gretzky rookie card go for $1.3M, this is something I could get into. Great timing and great product.

As someone who has no experience with alternative assets trading whatsoever, this is quite intriguing to see that apparently there’s a large enough market around sports carts that motivated you to build a platform around it. How does safe storage for physical assets work on your platform?

This is really cool!! I can see how this can be really useful for the sport card collectors/investors.

Congrats @bavidar @allie_held and team. Alt is an amazing product that has been a long time coming. As a collector and investor, I am incredibly excited!

Thanks for the hunt, Alexis! I’m so excited to be sharing Alt on Product Hunt with you all today. I’ve been in love with basketball ever since I was a kid and it wasn’t until 2016 when my dad sent me my old basketball cards when I reignited my passion for collecting cards. Since then, I’ve immersed myself deeper in the space, met so many great friends and fellow collectors, and grown my own collection to include some of the most rare cards. I’ve also come to see myself as not only a collector of great and rare cards, but an investor in cards. Alternative assets like sports cards, watches, vintage cars can be great stores of value and they are often not correlated with the stock market. They’ve largely been relegated to hobbyists and there hasn’t been much infrastructure in the space. It’s sort of like the wild west akin to crypto before Coinbase. Our team is on a mission to increase the transparency and liquidity of alternative assets. We want to make it as easy to invest in sports cards and other alts as it is with stocks. On Alt, you can track the current market value of your assets with our proprietary Alt Value, buy and sell pre-authenticated cards on our exchange, and securely store your collection in our custody solution, Vault. While we’re starting off with sports cards, we’ll also expand to other alternative assets like watches, art, and sneakers, based on what our customers want from us next. We’re also sharing that we raised $31M so far, with the most recent round led by Alexis Ohanian’s new fund, Seven Seven Six. We’re proud to have them, along with First Round, BoxGroup, SV Angel, Chapter One, and so many angels I can’t name them all here: Kevin Durant, Nat Friedman, John and Patrick Collison, Sue Wagner, Fred Ehrsam, Eric Wu, JD Ross, Laura Behrens Wu and more. You can sign up for Alt now at onlyalt.com :) Let me and the team know of any questions & feedback - we'll try and get back to everyone today! Leore

Having dove deeeeep into sports cards recently it was so obvious i needed to invest in alt (and thank god they took me when I begged). They solve so many of the pain points in investing in cards. I have sent basically all of my cards there, and the value isn’t just with the front end of the product. The vaulting of the cards, the handling of the mail in and out and all the logistics that come with. And the team is so special. Have learned so much from all of them. Can’t wait to see what comes next for the company.

A very underrated area of opportunity. Will definitely be following the Alt team on their journey to prominence. Congrats on the launch!

This feels like such a fresh idea and the way you’ve put it up citing your own example just made it easier to understand and connect!

Moving forward with the changing times is a great thing to do! I personally find this very thrilling and cannot wait to see what all will be included next. All the best for all your future work!

I went from checking Coinbase first thing in the morning to checking Alt first thing. Never going back to excel ;-)

@bavidar Congrats on the launch, the product looks awesome. Can you clarify what's different about Alt vs. COMC or StarStock? Also, you mention grading as a service when using Vault - does this imply you grade cards using your own methodology or do you facilitate sending of cards to PSA, etc. for grading? cc @makers

Brilliant! I've been interested in investing into collectible cards, but didn't know where to start. This will help. One little pet peeve, why are you asking me to sign up before I even have a chance explore your website?

I'm psyched to see Alt launch to the world today and super proud for First Round to be an early investor and supporter. The entire alternative asset market has changed dramatically over the past few years and Alt is going to help drive the next inflection point. @bavidar and his team have created the easiest way in the world to buy and sell sports cards and can't wait for everyone to be able to give it a try.

Alt is solving so many problems in the card industry. ✅ Portfolio management ✅ Buy/sell with low fees, instant transactions, 🚫 shipping, high-res images ✅ Current market valuations ✅ Insured storage ✅ ALL-IN-ONE!

@bavidar Congrats for this great product! Do you plan to start editing (European) football cards at anytime in the future? I think Sorare started doing that recently in Europe with some success.

Fascinating idea and great timing

I just went to my parent's place and brought back 1000's of MLB and NBA cards, this looks cool! Is this market hot? I feel like in 50 years I may look back and regret selling, but will definitely check the product out to test.