“There has never been a central registry or clearing house for this market,” ATH argued in a recent research report. That fragmentation, the firm said, creates an opportunity for blockchain-based ownership and settlement infrastructure.
The company is aiming to do so by placing physical cards, primarily ‘PSA-10s’ (cards receiving the highest grade awarded by Professional Sports Authenticator), in a secure, professionally managed vault. Each physical card would then be matched one-to-one with a digital token representing ownership. The token could change hands while the underlying card remains in storage, only moving when an owner chooses to redeem it for physical delivery.
The process is similar to putting physical assets, such as gold, Treasury bills, stocks and private credit, onto the blockchain. This process, called tokenization, has become one of the biggest topics in blockchain technology recently, as proponents say it reduces costs, makes settlement more efficient and enables around-the-clock trading of assets.
That model, for trading cards, appears to be attracting user activity.
Courtyard, one of the best-known platforms in the trading card space, offers digital packs whose contents correspond to physical collectibles held in a vault. It currently processes roughly $139 million of volume over 30 days and is running at an annualized fee of about $48 million, according to DeFiLlama data.
There are other blockchain platforms tokenizing trading cards, including Collector-Crypto ($148.2 million in annualized fees and $77.8 million in 30-day volume) and Phygitals ($15.2 million in annualized fees and $7.4 million in 30-day volume).
