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Collectible Card Trading Platform Alt Raises $75M As It Eyes Other Asset Categories And Preps Its Mobile Launch

Collectible Card Trading Platform Alt Raises $75M As It Eyes Other Asset Categories And Preps Its Mobile Launch

11/11/21, 4:30 PM
Money raised
$75 million
When we last checked in with Alt back in March, it had just raised $31M for its alternative asset platform — a platform, thus far, used primarily by those looking to research, trade, and securely store high-value sports cards.

Company Info

Company
Alt
Additional Info
Just a few months later, the company has raised a $75M Series B from a roster of top investors and pro athletes, made big hires, and is prepping to launch its mobile app, all while it start to expand the scope of the alternative assets it covers. To sell a card on Alt, its condition must first be judged by one of the already well-established grading groups (PSA, BGS, or SGC) then sent to Alt’s “Vault” — a light-controlled, temperature-controlled, fire-protected facility that the company casually refers to as “the Fort Knox of cards.” Individual listings show the prices a given card has sold for over the last year and offer up an “Alt value” — a Zestimate-style worth estimate based on all of the recent transaction data Alt has access to.Alt’s team is growing pretty quickly, with Avidar noting that the company currently sits at around 60 employees. Meanwhile, the company is quietly exploring a new source of revenue: loaning users money, with loans backed by the cards said user has stored with Alt. The company tells me this round was raised at a valuation of “over $325 million.” After spending its life thus far in the browser, Alt says its iOS and Android apps should launch later this month. Avidar points out that banks generally won’t consider things like sports card collections as “real collateral”; Alt, meanwhile, has a pretty deep understanding of just how much any given card is worth from day to day — and, as the cards are in Alt’s vault, they can assume said cards aren’t going to just disappear or suddenly get damaged.