Mint Condition - February 14, 2023
Collectable launches BWIC effort
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Leading Off
Shortly after the new year, Collectable announced some highly anticipated expansion efforts. The core of it revolved around Bids Want in Competition (BWIC), which is a two-round sealed bidding process “designed to increase price discovery and liquidity of iconic collectible assets, and to create additional shareholder opportunities for Collectable’s fractional ownership exchange.” Each quarter, at minimum, Collectable will offer up certain assets for a multi-round auction. The top 3 bids for each item are brought to a final round, where bidders can confirm or adjust their initial bid, then the top offer is submitted to the consigner for consideration. Within all of this, collectors can combine to submit a fractional group bid for consideration, which will allow the consigner to retain ownership. Having over 100,000 registered members, being a trusted platform to buy, sell, and trade equity interests in sports collectibles, and run by professional investors and collectors, Collectable believes it is well-positioned to introduce BWIC, a well-known product in the public financial markets, to sports collectibles and beyond.
There’s a lot to unpack here. Let’s get into it…
Mint Condition’s Take:
(1) Collectable’s first expansion beyond sports
When Collectable raised funding in 2021, it stated that it prided itself on being an “investing platform and community for sports fans.” The launch of BWIC and group bidding is the company’s first foray beyond the world of sports cards and memorabilia. Its BWIC process will invite comic books, video games, TCGs, and sports art to the platform, expanding the size of its potential customer base and addressable market. From my perspective, this is a logical next step for Collectable. Although the company launched exclusively in sports and continued that way for multiple years, understanding and validating how the sports collectibles market operates - consumer behaviors, asset valuations, building a community - while iterating on its product, then taking the learnings to apply them to other verticals all makes sense. The first few months of the BWIC process will be insightful for the Collectable team to see how sports items fare in demand and valuations vs. non-sports since it is not a given that other parts of the collectibles market will behave similarly to sports and embrace these innovative ways of collecting and investing.
Additionally, this expansion now places Collectable in more direct competition with Rally and other fractional asset platforms. Consigners of non-sports pieces now have another option to consider listing their items. Does Collectable follow Rally and start producing more content and entertainment in the non-sports realm? Does Rally consider rolling out a similar BWIC or group bidding process to compete with Collectable? Time will tell what happens, but the competitiveness of the fractional space is heating up.
(2) Group bidding - both within Collectable and other platforms - is intriguing
Within the BWIC process, Collectable is allowing individuals to combine and submit a joint bid on any listed asset. This adds another layer of fractionalization and democratization to the hobby world. Further, Collectable plans to eventually roll out a safe, secure group bidding platform for assets on other fractional and auction house sites. This type of bidding is done regularly on an informal basis in the hobby - you team up with some friends or family to jointly go in on an item, coordinating bidding strategy, payment, storage, and ultimately sale decisions. This only adds to the social aspect of collecting, which is where so many find joy within the hobby. But unless you sign a contract between all parties, there isn’t really anything binding that lays out the terms of the joint bid and ownership. That’s where Collectable enters. Offering a safe platform to facilitate these types of arrangements is something that the hobby is lacking today. I am bullish on this specific idea and believe it will open up many more potential customers and assets to the general Collectable platform. Believe it or not, I had a similar idea and proposed it on Blowout Card Forums to gather some feedback just 6 months ago - see below. Very cool to see something like this launch.
(3) Is the industry ready for this?
Whenever a new process, strategy, or really anything within the collectibles space is launched, it begs the question of whether the industry is ready and will embrace it from the outset. As we have discussed many times, the sports collectibles consumer base is slower to adapt to change and more set in their ways with how they interact with the hobby than the average person. Group bidding, as discussed above, is done regularly in an informal way and Collectable providing a safer, more institutionalized way of doing it will resonate with hobbyists. For BWIC to be successful, education is key. Although BWIC is a well-known process in the investment world, it is far less so in the hobby world. Educational materials, including press releases, videos, and tutorials, will be critical. Getting through to various parts of the hobby by promoting BWIC on podcasts, shows, and in-person events is important as well. Finally, finding key hobby “influencers” - specifically individuals who hold clout on social media or blogs - to use, review, and promote it will further support its growth.
Ultimately, I am looking forward to seeing what traction Collectable gains in the months to come with its launch and observing how other fractional players correspondingly react.
As always, I would love to hear your thoughts. You can reach me at jbmintcondition@gmail.com or on Twitter @jbmintcondition
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