Courtyard and rivals process $200M+ monthly volume tokenizing graded Pokémon cards. But eBay's $2.6B in sales poses the real liquidity test.
A new class of blockchain platforms is betting that tokenizing physical trading cards will fix a market stuck in the 1990s. The pitch: store a graded Pokémon card in a secure vault, issue a digital token representing ownership, and let that token change hands instantly while the card never moves. Settlement that takes seconds instead of weeks, with no shipping risk and no authenticity disputes.
Early volume suggests demand is real. Courtyard, the best-known platform in the space, processed roughly $139 million in volume over the past 30 days and is running at an annualized fee rate of about $48 million, according to DeFiLlama data. Competitors Collector-Crypto and Phygitals show $148.2 million and $15.2 million in annualized fees, respectively.
Those numbers remain small next to the incumbent. eBay saw $2.62 billion in individual trading card sales in 2025, according to GemRate data, including about $837 million of trading-card-game and non-sports cards. That tally excludes sealed boxes, packs, sets and lots, meaning the broader card business on eBay is even larger.
The gap matters because liquidity begets liquidity. A seller gravitates to the venue with the most potential buyers; buyers benefit from a deep history of completed sales that helps establish a card's actual value. That network effect gives eBay an advantage newer tokenized marketplaces have yet to replicate, and it creates a chicken-and-egg problem for startups like ATH Labs' Deadstock platform.
Transferring ownership on a blockchain settles a trade almost immediately. It doesn't guarantee someone will be on the other side of the transaction. A tokenized card trading among a small number of users could be less liquid, and harder to price, than the same card listed on an established marketplace.
The pricing problem is acute in collectibles, where minor differences produce large price gaps. Two copies of the same Pokémon card can receive different grades based on condition; cards with the same grade can command different prices depending on centering, provenance or other characteristics. Rare cards may trade infrequently, leaving only a handful of recent transactions from which to determine fair value.
ATH argues traditional marketplaces carry their own flaws. A physical card may be shipped repeatedly, sellers pay marketplace fees, and buyers must assess whether an item is authentic and accurately described. On Deadstock, a card is authenticated before entering the system and stays in custody while ownership changes hands. "They will get what they bought right away," said Dominic Jang, ATH co-founder and a longtime Pokémon card collector.
The tokenization model for trading cards mirrors what's happening with gold, Treasuries, stocks and private credit, where physical assets are represented on-chain to cut costs and enable around-the-clock trading. For cards, the process places physical inventory, primarily PSA-10s (the highest grade from Professional Sports Authenticator), in a professionally managed vault, matched one-to-one with a digital token.
ATH is trying to differentiate on supply. The firm partnered with Japan Trading Card Center (JTCC), which operates a large Japanese online marketplace for mystery card packs, in a deal granting Deadstock "exclusive" access to tokenizing JTCC's inventory and sourcing network. JTCC reportedly booked about 2.4 billion yen in profit from December 2024 to November 2025. Jang said JTCC's scale gives Deadstock a continuously replenished pool of cards that a new Western platform would struggle to replicate. "They are single-handedly the largest buying stream in Asia," he said.
House of Chimera, a crypto research firm, found that many tokenized-card platforms rely on the same grading and storage providers, making the underlying infrastructure similar across competitors. The firm said a more meaningful advantage may be having enough capital and inventory to support buybacks and liquidity. It also cautioned that much of the volume on these platforms comes from gamified pack openings and instant buybacks rather than collectors trading individual cards with one another.
The broader market context explains the interest. Pokémon cards rose 28% in the past year, outperforming both the S&P 500 (up about 13%) and bitcoin (down 29%). Target said trading card sales were up nearly 70% last year and plans to expand store space dedicated to the category; Walmart reported a 200% jump in trading card sales on its online marketplace. Both retailers imposed purchase limits to curb scalping. Influencer Logan Paul sold a rare Pikachu Illustrator card for $16.5 million, reportedly earning more than $8 million in profit, to AJ Scaramucci, founder of venture firm Solari Capital.
Estimates put the overall trading card market at $10 billion to $15 billion. Kovoy VC pegged it near $13 billion in 2024; Mordor Intelligence projects about $15 billion by 2026; TCGCharts estimates the market cap of every graded card at roughly $10.8 billion today.
ATH's ultimate goal is to make the blockchain invisible to users. A collector would buy a card, hold it, sell it or redeem it without thinking about the underlying settlement technology. The test, the company acknowledges, is less about whether a card can be represented by a token. That part already works. The harder question is whether enough collectors will choose to trade that token rather than list the card on eBay, take it to a convention, or keep it in a binder.
For related coverage, see Scaramucci Says Crypto Adoption Will Become Invisible.
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