The sports card market is growing at a breakneck pace, with many cards trading at all time highs and trade volumes rocketing past previous records. Sports cards continue to shatter growth records, despite the market being slowed by archaic technology, processes and extremely high price points. The value of the most popular cards today ranges from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars and above. Compound these high cost barriers to entry with exorbitant fees and shipping time/costs on sites like eBay, and you have a market that is inaccessible to most sports fans and collectors.
Take a look at Jayson Tatum’s page, for instance. To buy one of his more valuable cards, you better be ready to write a big check ($2,000+). Simply put, buying a quality card these days is outright expensive. In this kind of market collectors are required to spend a huge portion of their budget on a single card, or worse, they are simply priced out all together. We aim to change that.
So, what exactly makes fractional ownership so important? Let’s run through the 4 most important aspects that fractional ownership enables.
Balling On Any Budget:
We will keep this short and sweet - quality trading cards cost a lot... Fractional buying on Dibbs allows budgets of any size to invest in today's best sports card for as little as a dollar.
Diversify Your Portfolio
We’ve established that prominent trading cards are expensive and even out of range for most budgets. With fractional, however, that is no longer the case. Fractional allows you to buy a piece of a card while also spreading your assets elsewhere.
Let’s say, for instance, that you want to buy a 2016 Brandon Ingram Prizm Silver Card (PSA 10). That card is currently valued at more than $1,000. With fractional ownership, you could buy, say, 5% of his card for around $50. Not only do you now have an interest in Brandon Ingram’s preeminent rookie card, but you can also collect several other cards in this fashion and give yourself a diverse roster of premium sports cards.
With fractional ownership, not only can you put together an efficient roster that you believe in, but you can also protect your money, while spreading it out among multiple players. Build a roster that makes sense to you. The era of buying one card with your entire budget is over.
Real Time 24/7 Markets—Increased Liquidity
Card values are constantly shifting and fractional ownership unlocks the ability to take full advantage of these market dynamics. The fractional technology utilized by Dibbs allows collectors of any size budget to instantly trade any amount of interest in a card on live order books. This advancement in technology and process drastically reduces costs while greatly improving market liquidity.
With a fractional approach you can buy and sell pieces of a card 24/7, playing the market while getting in and out at the right times. In a largely illiquid market, fractional allows cards to become much more liquid assets.
Let’s use Tyler Herro’s 2019 Rookie Prizm Silver PSA 10 card, for example. Anyone who follows the sports card market saw his card explode in September, coinciding with his breakout in the NBA playoffs.
Between September 20th and September 24th, his 2019 Prizm Silver PSA 10 card ballooned in value: from $880 to $1,525. The value of his card skyrocketed in real time, responding to his 37-point outburst on September 23rd.
By the end of the NBA finals, on October 13th, this same card was at $604. Check out the graphic below.
In situations like this, smart fractional traders could attempt to buy and sell in real time. In traditional markets like eBay it would have been nearly impossible to capture the rapidly changing values due to shipping time and auction durations. Fractional buying, especially in relation to liquidity, unlocks a whole new level of trading cards for collectors.
Reduce Friction & Fees
The traditional card trading landscape involves high listing fees, fraud risk and long waiting times…. And of course, more fees with each of these steps! Let’s look at ebay, for example. Fees can easily range from 12%-17% when listing costs, shipping fees and payment processing are taken into account. On top of that, you are dealing with a wait time of 3-14+ days from purchase to receiving the card. Not to mention the worry of fraud hanging over your head. These logistical hurdles are simply unnecessary and are swiftly eliminated with fractional ownership and instant trading on Dibbs.
Traditionally, sellers lose a significant amount of money to listing fees, shipping and payment processing rates. With all these additional costs, it’s likely not worth selling a card unless a gain of 30-50% is achieved, especially when considering collectible tax implications.
All these overhead and logistical nightmares complicate what should be a simple deal. With fractional ownership there is no need to jump through hoops anymore to buy and sell sports cards. Eliminating these extra costs makes the buying and selling experience more enjoyable for collectors and potentially much more profitable.
Where Does This Leave Us?
Long story short, fractional ownership allows you to instantly buy/sell more cards while spending less money. Fractional ownership dramatically increases your options on how to collect sports cards, while largely eliminating the high prices of buying whole cards, lofty listing fees and shipping time and money that come with sports cards right now, where owning entire cards is the only option.
