Collectibles in the Digital Age: Inside the Collectibles.com App

GM GM, welcome to what is going to be another fantastic episode of DevNTell. So if you didn't know, DevNTell is a 30-minute podcast held every week allowing founders, hackers, and anyone in between an opportunity to come on the show and showcase what they've built. And today, I'm ecstatic to welcome Dietrich von Behren, who is the co-founder of Collectibles.com. So if you're not aware, Collectibles.com is an all-in-one tracking app for collectors to buy, sell, and organize sports and non-sports trading cards. So if you stick around for today's episode, you'll get to meet Dietrich, learn all about Collectibles.com and how you can get started using it today. All right, let's get into it.

GM GM, welcome to the show Dietrich. Pleasure to have you on, man.

It is... it is great to be here and I... I love the intro, especially when you say you're ecstatic for a great show, uh you know, that's... that's promised ahead. Now I gotta deliver!

I'm sure... I'm sure you will, I'm sure you will. No pressure. Um, but uh, yeah, I... I am really excited um for our audience and... and myself to... to learn um about Collectibles.com. Uh I've been poking around personally on the website uh so I... I have some uh questions kind of lined up for you. But um, before we get into all that, um perhaps you just like to give a... introduction about yourself.

Sure, um, so yeah, I'm Dietrich, I'm... I'm one of the co-founders of Collectibles.com. There are three... three co-founders in total, uh the other... uh you know, my other two colleagues Alex and Anas, they are... they are actually based in... in Germany. You know, it's a running joke, I may use this all the time but I say, you know, despite my name, I'm the US citizen, so I'm... uh yeah, I'm... I'm based in... in the US. Um, but yeah, the... the three of us make the team. You know, I've... I've got a background in... uh you know, in... in entrepreneurship, I've been doing... doing things for... for quite a while but super, super excited to... uh you know, what we're building right now. I mean, collectibles is... is an incredible space, I mean, it is driven truly by a passionate audience and that's what makes it so exciting. It's... it's eclectic, it's diverse, there's so many different things that... that people collect, which I'm sure we'll be diving into, but um, yeah.

And uh yeah, I... I guess um from your... your background um, I know uh there... like Collectibles.com has this um blockchain angle to it as well. Just curious like how did you kind of find yourself in the... the Web3 crypto space and uh I guess how did you get into collectibles as... as well?

Yeah, well look, tru- truth be told, uh the... the crypto angle is... uh is something that is kind of coming in its... in a later stage. For us, uh you know, we... we really started off as... as Web2. And I think that's... that's kind of important to note, you know, we... we recognized early on and actually uh you know, I... I joined later in the... in the life stage of the process you know of the company founding. Uh the company started actually as... Cardbase. A company called Cardbase which was focused on card collectors. Uh sports cards, Pokemon, um and you know along the path there uh I really got to give credit to Alex on this, he discovered a book by uh Chris Dixon talking about uh tokenomics and... and really how tokenomics can be a lever to um drive... drive user engagement and really provide a certain sense of participation, rewarding people for... you know for their participation, for the value creation of the company. And I think that... that was the catalyst that inspired us to... to get into uh into crypto, really looking at what we could do uh to... to leverage that and... and to really create an experience that was unique for... for collectors.

Awesome, awesome.

And... and yeah, I see hey Narb, not- not to interrupt but I just want to say 'cause you said... you said something about the background, I want to say that this is a real background here! So it's... you know, and I was going to make a joke early on, your... your background my friend is... uh one that looks like I don't know, post-apocalyptic, uh J.R.R. Tolkien Mordor, so it's... it's dark! Uh I'm on the friendly side here. Um yeah, so you know I'm a- uh you know about myself maybe just to kind of throw that in, um everyone on the team is a uh collector. I am uh a vintage lunchbox collector, uh which is what you see here. So I've got uh you know about 300 lunchboxes and counting, uh actually I... I actually brought... brought one here along that I wanted to show you just kind of this will tie in but uh look at this here. Star Wars! Yeah, look at that beauty. Oh, it is... it is a beauty, right? And and the thing about this is, it may not have the greatest value but what I'm holding in you know in my hands here, right, real object, is uh 1977. 1977, uh it really speaks I think to kind of the collector mentality of why people collect for different reasons. For me, it's... it's a matter of nostalgia, you know. And uh so anyway I just wanted to point out about my background, of course this... this has become a lot more relevant now with uh the Netflix special about the Miracle on Ice, you know, it's uh signed by all the... all the team members, makes it unique, I don't know absolutely you know if it's... if it's a one of one, I... I don't think so, but you know for me as a collector it's not always about value, it's about significance, it's about meaning. And uh I kind of like the uh Miracle, right, because it speaks... speaks to entrepreneurship, speaks to you know the possibilities of... of doing anything. So anyway I just... I just wanted to throw that in there.

I was going to ask you about your background anyways and... and yeah, I mean the Olympics I think are starting today, Winter Olympics, so maybe there'll be another USA special uh around the corner, we'll see.

But um, yeah, I mean on the topic of collectibles itself, um I mean we've seen a really big um kick in interest um the last handful of years and you mentioned Pokemon cards and they're one of the bigger drivers at least the one of the biggest drivers that I've seen, um like what do you... what do you think kind of attributes to this recent rise or re-rise in interest in... in the space?

Overall or just Pokemon? Because if we're talking about Pokemon, I blame Logan Paul! Logan Paul! Logan Logan Paul with his diamond-studded Pokemon card! Look, I... um I mean, joking aside, obviously he... you know he brought some incredible visibility to it but you know uh whether it's Pokemon or you know any other collectible, um there is a rise, Narb, for sure. And... and I think uh you know for... for any market, uh when you start seeing trends develop, you sort of have to be careful like and sort of think, is it a passing fad, you know, is it a trend that's... that's limited or not? I truly believe that uh you know we... we're in a new era now and uh where collectibles are being recognized as alternative assets. And I think that... that's the key, that's... that's the primary answer to the question, you know, why is there a rise in... in interest around collectibles? Um because... because of that. Uh you're... uh I said Jake Paul, let's blame someone else too, I blame your fellow Canadian uh Kevin O'Leary. I don't know if you've been following him. And of course I say all of this very jokingly, but uh you know look, Kevin you know also recognized that there's a... there's a huge opportunity, uh you know a lot of these sports cards, you know rare sports cards uh are rising in value and... and in even in many cases eclipsing the S&P, the standard stock market, because we often say like look, you know you can buy a gold bar, you can go buy some stocks or if you can you know get your hands on uh a rare autographed Kobe jersey or some Michael Jordan sneakers, they have... they have real value, right? I mean they're being auctioned off by the likes of Sotheby's and Heritage. So uh again kind of returning to the point, the collectibles market I believe is being driven by people recognizing that... that they are alternative assets, that there's... there's tangible meaning and value to them, plus also there's a you know growing popularity. I think that... that people love... love what it represents, you know, because it's... it's the intersection of... of fandom, of pop culture, history, right? Because uh if if you're a fan of a certain sports team, the... the logical step is you want to have some things that... uh you know represent the team. Those are collectibles.

Yeah, I... I 100% agree. And I mean it kind of shows in like those like 10,000 plus dollar like um bags from big designers like Chanel or... or whomever is like it's just... just a bag but it has that prestige with that brand name on it that makes it so valuable. And... and I guess a collectible in... in itself. Um but I guess uh coming back in, I think this is a good segue. Um why don't you give us uh your elevator pitch of what the Collectibles.com platform is.

Elevator pitch, that sounds so... so salesy. Uh I'm not... I won't give an elevator pitch, I... I will say more of like uh you know why do we exist, right? And... and why should someone care? The... the foundation and... and the I mean the real premise for why we launched Collectibles.com is you know we recognized a couple of opportunities that number one uh there's no real commu- you know centralized community for collectors. I mean there's... there's a... there's a lot of activity in you know across different social platforms and you know huge respect, I mean some of them are... are massive. Um but you know really thinking about where... where is a... a true destination where uh those that love to collect things can... can... can gather, uh interact with one another, learn, learn about their... you know what they collect, and kind of inspire each other. So that's... that's one piece of it, community. The the other is uh you know it's... it's utility. Kind of going back when I said that we you know started off as... as Cardbase, as a uh card management app. Um people... people collect a lot more things than... than cards. And we often... we like to say you know uh the core four as... as we see it based on... on all of the data from our users, uh sports cards or let's just say cards, which is sports cards and Pokemon TCG, comics, coins, and stamps. Those... those four are representative, you know probably a lion's share of what people collect globally. But you know I mean we talked about before the show started, right, I mean there's different areas you know whether it's my... my lunchboxes, that's way down the list but uh you know there's... uh you know sports memorabilia, historical memorabilia, entertainment memorabilia, um sneakers, sneakers are a big thing. Uh one of our investors is a big sneakerhead. And so again there's just you know a lot of things that people collect, they need to be able to organize, manage, track, and value. So that utility uh is... is something that... that I think is significant to... to what we bring to the table, helping... helping create order. Uh so that's... that's again that's the utility. Um and there's a commerce piece as well. Um you mentioned earlier in the show uh about uh trading, buying, and selling. I have to correct you there, we actually do not have that uh as of yet. That will- I'm guessing we'll probably talk about this later about what we're going to do uh you know later this year. But no, we... we operate uh as a collection management service. It's... it's like a SaaS. Uh that's the utility piece. It's top of the funnel for our... for our business because we get incredible insights, you know into what people are collecting, what... what's popular, uh what's most valuable. We can start you know connecting things, right, uh you know surfacing content that's more relevant, personalizing and really kind of creating an ecosystem. So that's clearly not an elevator pitch, that's more like falling down the stairs of an answer! But you know I just there's... there's a lot to unpack and I just you know it really is not about doing the pitch here, it's more of just to underst- you know I want you know people to understand that if they're a collector, there's... there's a lot to find. And uh you know just to give you a couple of sizzle numbers, recent sizzle numbers, we've got over... over 30 million items within our collection management uh representing uh north of 10 billion dollars in terms of aggregate value, okay? So sizzle numbers uh but why it's meaningful is you know how it plays into how we're going to develop our product. More on that, but for users, it's a ton of fun. You can go to Collectibles.com and uh type in anything and you uh you may be surprised in what you'll find. Um I'll leave it at that and encourage people to do that.

The people definitely should, and I... I love... I love the in-depth uh that you went into. Um yeah, certainly better than... than a... than a high-level pitch. Um I guess um for our audience today who are watching, um like say for example like I had like a rare I don't know, Pokemon card, a Charizard say, and I wanted to uh I wanted to onboard onto the Collectibles.com app. Um what... I guess um can you walk us through the... the process of like what a person can do or how they would go about bringing their collection um onto the platform?

Sure, um well uh despite the name Collectibles.com, uh we are not just a website but we also provide uh mobile apps. So iOS and Android. That is uh really the... the best experience for... for the use case. Um in terms of onboarding, one thing that we did uh last year because we've been iterating and you know just to kind of step back and say a couple of things uh if I may. Um we are... we are one of the... well actually we are the only uh startup in the collectibles space backed by Peter Thiel. Okay, I want to say that. Uh you know there's a lot of people always asking like you know who's... who's behind us? And there's cer- you know your earlier question about how did we get into crypto and Web3 and all the rest. Um initial ideas early on were to be focused on... on Web3 but we've grown, right? Uh since then but I mentioned the thing about data is because that... that is the underlying piece that... that makes the experience the best. So we've spent a... a number of years, we're now celebrating our fourth year. Uh so we're... even though we're still early stage, okay, we'll always be early stage, but you know we've... we've invested a lot and... and we've grown a lot. Um almost 2 million users uh right now. Uh the data that we have for cards, sports cards and... and Pokemon uh is significant. So what you can do is uh you know you download the app, we... you'll load up a uh the ability to scan, what we call scan, but you just take a photo of any object Narb. And so whether it's your Pokemon card or anything in the house, there's some real significance because if we recognize that it's not your Pokemon card, then we switch to an AI layer. An AI will then do image recognition and... and try to identify as best as it can uh what you have. And so for a lot of users, I mean it's funny, we've actually... actually even found what we call passive collectors, right? Like those that aren't actively you know looking for things but and acquiring things but have items of value that they may... that they may not even know. So uh specific to your answer, your Pokemon card, you would you know download the app, you know fire... fire it up, take a photo, it'll it'll scan, recognize, match it to our card catalog and... and add it to your profile where you can then you know your profile is... is sort of like an online portfolio. You have it on display, you can share that with people, people can see it if you want, if you want to be seen, you have the option to turn it off. But uh you know alternatively, you know if you've got other things, you know our app almost turns uh users into treasure hunters, that's kind of the expression that we use 'cause you can take this app anywhere, right, uh whether it's uh grandma and grandpa's attic, uh you know see in the garage what might be there or you know take it to a uh antique shop or a or a garage sale. Um again disclaimer AI is... is not yet perfect but it's... uh still delivers uh you know quite a bit of delight, uh our magic moment as we call it when it does reveal what it may be.

Interesting, interesting. And yeah indeed AI is not perfect but it's... it's uh certainly taken quite... quite a... quite a step this last little bit. Um just curious, um when you scan so say for example the... the item like say like the jersey in the back there since it has all these autographs on it, is the AI able to detect like the authenticity of the autographs and like identify who the signatures are from?

That... that is a great question and the answer is is no. There's... there's nothing that you... I mean I would argue, because there are some out there that are in fact talking about or and are building cer- you know they're focusing on... on grading and trying to do, you know competing with grading companies and and applying scanning. I think it's cool, I think it- I do think it's a great idea, but let's just call it, it would be a... a lesser grade. It would not be authenticated because just like, you know you could ask me Narb, hey, you know if you take a photo of a diamond ring, you know can it authenticate it? Right? Yeah unless you got the green visor on and and the microscope and all of that, you're really, you know a photo is not going to cut it. And the same would be for you know the answer to your question. What AI would do if I took a photo of it you know standing a little bit away from it, it would recognize, oh Miracle 80, it... it would be smart enough to go this is a jersey representing Miracle on Ice that includes uh autographs. And... and our AI function will do that. This is kind of how it'll do it because not only will it recognize the object, but it'll give you like a little bit of history and synopsis to the extent that it can. So it's cool. And now, I mean I haven't tested it, and so you put me on the spot, but if I were to take- if I were to zoom in and start taking photos of the individual autographs, it may recognize you know who... who these... who these individuals are. But specifically to the point of authentication, no, it... it would have to be, you know done by a an actual, you know authenticator.

Yeah, fair enough, fair enough. I just uh yeah the gears started to turn as you were kind of explaining. Um and I guess um you mentioned it, um that um there isn't really any other um kind of platform like Collectibles.com out there. Uh I guess um what would you say is kind of like the... the thing that sets it apart from things that may come a little close to it or... or anybody that might be running say like a NFT uh equivalent of this platform?

Mm, okay look, le- let me separate them because the NFT is is the crypto side of it and I'll speak to that momentarily, but uh you know to be fair there are other apps out there that will do collection management. Some of them you know really good. You know we we always like to say we... we respect all competition, it's... it's healthy for the market and uh you know it it pushes everyone to... to do better for... for customers. Um the others out there are really focused exclusively on cards, um you know many of them just sports cards uh because in terms of like velocity, I mean just you know it may be an obvious statement here but sports card collectors they go deep, right? They go deep! You know you've... you've got guys that will collect thousands, tens of thousands, I mean I think one of the- one of the biggest accounts that we've got just for sp- on Collectibles.com for cards alone I think is north of 50,000. Like these guys really, really collect a lot. You're not going to- I'm not going to have you know a thousand lunchboxes, you know it's just you know, where would you put them? But uh you know to what makes us different, we are the only one that uh brings together a comprehensive solution that is integrated. So you know again I like to say we started off core business uh focusing on sports cards and TCG, we built a robust data set, uh I'd say industry-leading data set to... to power that, and you know we've you know we're going on to the other verticals, remember the core four: comics, coins, and stamps. But you know beyond that, it is... it is really the only place where... where you can come, you can scan, take a photo of anything, any anything that you own, any object, anything of curi- any curiosity, uh it'll get added to your profile, at the same time you are in an- in an integrated community uh with... with others that you can you can chat with, you can find all sorts of things. Um and I think that... that is certainly one of the... the value props and what makes uh Collectibles.com a a unique destination.

Yeah, yeah and well said, well said. Um yeah there's... uh there's something to be said um about the... the community of collectors. Um yeah and I've seen it, like I've seen some... some people with some pretty pretty big hockey card collections and yeah they... they do indeed um go pretty deep. Um and I guess uh you've touched on it um throughout the... the session uh today, um but I guess uh just... kind of summarizing like what would you say is uh Collectible.com's North Star vision? Um it's been around like you said for four years, um you guys built this great community, people can... can scan and upload. Uh I guess um this year uh and going into perhaps the next five years, um what in your mind is kind of the... the vision of how the platform will evolve?

Yeah, uh that is a good question and you know I'll have to answer it with some discretion because uh you know some things are proprietary as one has to say when when building but uh you know and having a startup. But I'll answer it with also picking up something that I neglected uh from from the last question because you asked me you know and you said NFTs and I said I'll get to it and I didn't and I forgot it but I was just looking down at uh the comments here and someone wrote uh provenance is important. And I go okay very good point. Uh right one of the things that we're going to be looking to add on to is uh the ability to include NFTs in your collection management, okay? So um actually let me take a couple of steps back, I mean it's I'm all over the place here, indulge me on this but you when you asked about products and what what do we do, one of the things that we did launch or actually your question about uh a rise in interest in sp- in Pokemon and uh I'd say one of them is is the is the repack space. So I don't know if you're familiar with that, you know the mystery box, the the mystery you know mystery pack where you you know open packs you don't know what's inside of them and it's uh you know let's say it it appeals to the... the crypto crowd very much. So uh you know there's some big players out there, we launched a a product as well, a gaming product, we call it Repackz, you'll find it on Collectibles.com um Repackz with a Z. Um and it's a game of chance and it's a lot of excitement around it. Pokemon cards are by far the most popular, okay? Industry-wide these these games of chance, these repacks have been driving tremendous appetite, tremendous interest, tremendous sales, right? I mean it's been really, really accelerating that. So you know going all the way back to the front of our conversation, this is one of the things. Uh since we launched it, we were actually uh in Abu Dhabi for Solana Breakpoint. Solana is one of our investors, uh a strategic investor from early on. So we put uh we put Repackz on chain. Uh now you know every every pack, every card within a pack has a twin NFT, right? This is just kind of operationally how it works. We now want to kind of look further about you know we recognize there's a lot of you know folks that have NFT collectibles. And so one of the things on the roadmap is to uh is to integrate the ability to add your NFTs to our collection management as well. That's one thing that we haven't done, so that's... that's one thing worth noting. The reason I said I you know noted about the provenance, we we I mean this is almost like a far greater question about Web3 blockchain crypto in general how we see it. I I think some of that language is going to go away, um to be honest Narb, right? Like you know two-three years ago uh Web3 was was a hot term, right? It was like a category, you know you invested against that because you're going to build in Web3. I think we've gotten to the point now where honestly number one it's a recognition that you know traditional collectors, 99% of them, don't care, don't know, don't want to know, right? It's almost like uh I thought about this earlier because I wanted to make the point, sort of like when you're building when you're building a house, when you're building any product or when you're building a house, right, uh it's it's like the plumbing in a house. I think we can all agree that blockchain is infrastructure, right? And and just like plumbing in a house where you know makes things work or electricity, right, it gets covered up. It's it's behind the wall. So in many ways I'd say I carry this metaphor as that blockchain is is behind the interface. It's it's a r- it's going to be the rails, the operational rails. And so that's really how we're viewing it, uh we we want to integrate in ways that are frictionless, seamless to the consumer but now kind of getting to the comment that someone made there, one of the biggest things in in in collectibles when it comes to commerce is uh you know the ability to trust, to trust what you're getting isn't counterfeit, uh you know who who's selling it, uh has it been traded before. This is where blockchain is going to make a huge difference, uh to that point of provenance. We'll be able to to track items and give greater trust and transparency to consumers. So now you know what are we looking at uh for for this year? We're going to be rolling out a marketplace uh it's not easy, any developer, any you know folks that are you know out there building the builders, the entrepreneurs they know creating a marketplace is is not trivial. It's it's not an easy task. You need both sides of the table, you need the buyers and the sellers. So we kind of made the the conscious decision early on, like it would be foolhardy if we would have done it three years ago because we didn't have the scale. So we focused on the utility, the collection management. And as I said, right, that's the top of the funnel, it brought it in. With 30 million items under management right now, we get a lot of consumer signals, a lot of uh you know input from our users saying come on let's let's do this. They I mean right now they're already using like our feed and our community and our DMs to trade with each other. We know this is going to happen, but that's cool. But you know one of the big things that we're going to do is is unlock a marketplace and you know one of the observations here is that there's a lot of opportunity because most of- I mean actually the majority of our items are off-market. What we call off-market items because you're not really posting to your collection on Collectibles.com if you're wanting to sell it, because it's not it's not there, you'd be sell- you'd be posting it elsewhere. So what that shows for us is that you know those users that we have that pay for our our service are those that have great items uh that they that they just want to track, manage, and value. But you know what, hey start connecting people, there may be some great treasures to be found and offers to be made.

That's... that's super exciting to hear and uh yeah I guess a bit of alpha uh for our folks uh tuning in uh today. So you'll definitely want to uh get up and running with that Collectibles.com account and uh kind of prep yourself for what's coming. Um and I guess uh on that topic, um as uh looking at the time, um what's the best way for people to keep up to date with all things Collectibles.com, I guess join a community, what's the best way?

To learn about what we're doing? Indeed. Yeah, well um start an account. Uh it's it's free, uh it's free to start an account and free to play around with it. We you know we're sort of a it it operates as a freemium. You can definitely uh take it for a test drive, upload upload a number of items, once you reach a certain threshold, then then you you gotta pay. Uh not to not to explore it, but if you want to build out a a robust collection, you know there's a price for that, monthly or annually. But yeah the account is free, encourage everyone to to sign up. Uh you know we've got newsletters, we've got updates and of course you you know you track what we're doing on X as well.

Amazing. And yeah all that information um will be in the description of the podcast you are watching or listening to today. And uh with that, uh Dietrich thank you so much um for taking the time out of your day to come chat with us. I really enjoyed our conversation, I hope you did too. Um and uh yeah really looking forward to seeing Collectibles.com continue to evolve here and hope the audience uh starts to upload their collections uh today or over the weekend.

Yeah, I'll... I'll be looking for yours Narb!

Indeed, yeah for sure. I got I actually have um a bunch of Magic cards uh that I have to get out of or find in my closet, so maybe maybe. Have you got any One Piece in your stash? Have you gone there yet? Uh I don't recall, it's been a while since I've uh I've looked but it might be. I hear that's the hot new thing. Indeed.

Awesome. And uh yeah I guess uh with that, I just want to wish everyone a very happy weekend, happy Friday wherever you may be and uh we'll catch you back here next week for another great episode of DevNTell.

Happy Friday and happy collecting!

Happy collecting. Well said. All right y'all, have a good one. Cheers.