From New York, the startup platform Courtyard.io recently completed a $30 million Series A funding round, reigniting discussions about the integration of collectibles with "gambling mechanisms". Founded in 2021, the company quietly established a gambling-like business system through a "digital vending machine" that sells card "mystery packs".
Gambling-like Mechanism: The Expected Value Behind "Card Drawing"
Courtyard's core product is a mystery pack with uncertainty and probabilistic returns: consumers pay $25 to $5,000, randomly receive a graded card, with about a 30% chance of drawing a card worth more than the purchase price, akin to "physical card pack gambling". After opening the pack, users can choose to:
immediately resell to the platform (the platform buys back at 90% of the market price, deducting fees);
request the card to be mailed home for collection.
In addition, the platform also offers a card trading market with zero seller fees, all goods are managed by the platform's vault, and supports direct delivery from platforms like eBay, CGC, PSA, Fanatics, achieving a "physical-digital-financial" closed-loop system.
From Cards to Comics, Monthly Sales Surge by a Hundredfold
After partnering with grading agency CGC, Courtyard further launched comic book mystery packs. This new business, launched at the beginning of 2024, saw monthly sales skyrocket from $50,000 to $50 million, a nearly hundredfold increase, demonstrating strong user stickiness and the allure of gambling-style consumption.
Behind the Series A Funding, the Goal is "Entertainment + Trading" Dual Tracks
Courtyard's co-founders include former YouTube executive Nicolas le Jeune and finance-background Paulin Andurand. They stated that this round of funding will be used for product feature expansion, mobile app launch, global operations, and exploring more collectible categories, such as sports memorabilia and rare toys.
Courtyard's business logic is highly similar to gambling — users pay for "random returns", and the platform attracts repeat purchases with probability design and instant cash-out mechanisms. Essentially, it embeds a gambling structure within the "physical collectibles market", carving out a "legal yet highly entertaining" gray innovative path, worthy of attention from the iGaming industry.
