Onchain Physical Collectibles Marketplace has ‘Exploded’ in 2025

Onchain Physical Collectibles Marketplace has ‘Exploded’ in 2025

Courtyard.io is believed to be among the fastest growing companies in the world. The marketplace and tokenization service that enables users to own and trade physical collectibles on blockchain did $56.4mm in sales volume in March, up from $16.4mm in January and $10.5mm in December 2024.

For context, CryptoSlam reported the entire NFT market did ~$8.8 billion in sales last year.

And yet, outside of the crypto community, the company continues to fly largely under the radar.

But “real world assets going onchain has become a real trend. Whether it’s dollars, bonds, real estate, or collectibles,” Pet Berisha (founder, Sporting Crypto) said. “At the same time, Courtyard is solving a real problem.”

It’s faster, cheaper, and safer to sell collectibles through the platform than on competing marketplace sites.

Collectors “can rip digital packs from [their] phone anytime and reveal real, graded cards—then sell instantly, trade, or keep them vaulted,” Nicolas le Jeune (co-founder & CEO, Courtyard) said.

Add the growing demand for sports memorabilia and collectibles and one can understand why the company has ‘exploded’ in recent months.

The lack of attention being paid to Courtyard’s rapid rise may have to do with perceptions about its upside.

The company “is innovating or evolving an existing process, not doing something completely new and revolutionary,” Berisha said. 

And it’s not a meme coin that can appreciate 10,000% overnight.

The bar for crypto stories to receive mainstream media attention has also risen dramatically since FTX’s implosion.

Courtyard “is still quite small when you put it in the context of the state of Wyoming launching a stablecoin, Fidelity tokenizing treasuries, or even FIFA saying it is interested in launching a token,” Berisha said.

But look for the company to become a household name in short order. Its sales numbers are getting too big to ignore.

Non-crypto natives often find it difficult to understand the value prop in Web3 tech. So, the products that have cut through and reached the masses to date are less speculative and/or abstract than say a meme coin project. 

“When NBA Top Shot launched in 2021, it blew up. People immediately ‘got it’ because the NFTs they were selling were just like Panini or Topps trading cards, but in a video format,” Berisha said. Collectors “didn't really care about the crypto-ishness of the product. They viewed collecting NFTs like anything else.”

Courtyard has struck a similar chord. Its platform simply uses NFTs and blockchain technology to solve inefficiencies in the collectibles space.

“Think about all of the steps that go into buying or selling a card online,” Berisha said. The card “must be packaged and delivered. The payment may take time to be wired. It might have to be done across countries or currencies. The money could get stolen when it’s sent. And when [buyer finally receives the package, the product] might be fraudulent.”

Courtyard has eliminated much of the risk and made the process more efficient by placing physical collectibles —and payments— onchain. 

Collectors send their cards to the company where they are vaulted. Courtyard incentivizes users to their submit cards with a rev-share on future sales transactions (1%).

The company then issues an NFT on the front-end of the platform for each card submitted.

If/when the digital token is sold, the NFT is instantly transferred to the buyer along with ownership of the physical item (it physically resides in the vault). If the owner opts to remove his/her card from the vault, the NFT is ‘burned’.

“Instead of it taking five days to go from one buyer to one seller, it now takes under five seconds,” Berisha said. 

That’s beneficial to both sides of the transaction. But it also gives Courtyard an advantage over established marketplaces. 

Historically, a single card could only be sold ~60x in a given year. 

“That same card could now sell 500, 1,000, 2,000 times over that same period,” Berisha said. “It is a complete game changer in terms of potential sales activity surrounding these assets.”

And, of course, Courtyard retains a seller’s fee on each transaction. 

The company’s 6% price tag should come down as competition emerges, and undoubtedly it will.

But not from Dapper Labs or Sorare. Courtyard is not in the business of acquiring costly team or league rights.

It is “competing with eBay,” Berisha said.

The bulk of trading card sales occur on that platform.

And logic would suggest it’s only a matter of time until the publicly traded online marketplace enters the ‘physical to virtual’ space. The company acquired KnownOrigin (an art-focused NFT marketplace) in ’21.

But that isn’t going to happen overnight. 

“Courtyard had to build so much infrastructure to reach this point,” Berisha said. “You need the vaulting on the backend and the crypto payments on the front end, the wallet provision, all the onchain stuff. It’s a big undertaking.”

And eBay simply isn’t there yet.

While the marketplace giant undoubtedly has deeper pockets than Dapper or Sorare, the potential TAM associated with facilitating transactions across categories is much greater than selling digital trading cards (TopShot is doing $1.5-$2.5mm in sales volume/month). Courtyard seems likely to quickly expand into coins, game-used collectibles, comic books and/or video games.

The NFT abbreviation likely has some reading ready to dismiss the upstart platform. 

“But understand that non-fungible tokens are just a derivative technology of blockchain,” Berisha said. 

When used for good, they verify ownership online and can positively impact businesses.

Existing physical marketplaces “all have the same issues: fraud, settlement of payment, trust,” Berisha said. And “it just so happens blockchain solves for a bunch of that.”

While sports rights owners won’t be able to command large licensing fees from Courtyard, they should still be taking note of the traction it is gaining.

“The willingness to buy physical items onchain and not store them in your home is a fundamentally different consumer behavior than we've seen in the past in the collectibles market,” Berisha said. “At some point, there will probably be a rights owner that tries to get in on secondary market action too” (think: game-used memorabilia auction house). 

Of course, these are also potential fans aggregating on the platform that could/should be purchasing inventory directly from the team (think: tickets, merchandise).

“If they’re buying sports cards at these volumes and expenditure, and they are the same type of consumers that buy direct from rights holders, it’s obvious they need to be paying attention here,” Berisha said.

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