Introducing StarStock: A Site To Day Trade Sports Cards

Founded in November 2019, StarStock enables hobby enthusiasts to buy and sell graded and raw (ungraded) cards instantaneously. The process is actually quite simple.

Sellers ship their cards to StarStock to be listed on their website. The cards are stored inside of StarStock’s secure vault. When a buyer purchases a card, they have the option to keep the card stored in the vault, or to have it sent to them. StarStock receives five percent of each sale.  

The instantaneous buy and sell model is key to what makes StarStock so much fun. For example, fans can purchase a card of a player before a game starts. If the player has a big game, they can immediately sell the card just hours after purchasing it and take their profits.

“My partners and I are passionate about sports cards.” said CEO and co-founder Scott Greenberg. “StarStock was inspired by our experiences trading sports cards on traditional marketplaces. We wanted the ability to trade players instantly, which would allow us to day trade players while we are watching the games. We realized that card traders like us wanted ownership of the card, but didn’t actually need to possess the physical card. By separating ownership and possession, we’ve created a fast-moving market that’s able to capture real time price movement of athletes.”

To date, over 750,000 cards have been sold on StarStock with another 1,000,000+ cards currently stored in their vault

One of the great features on StarStock includes the ability to submit raw cards and have them assign each one a StarStock A, StarStock B or StarStock C grade. 

StarStock A cards are considered “higher quality raw cards” and have some exciting metrics behind them for both buyers and sellers. For instance, in their most recent PSA submission, StarStock A cards (SSA) graded 93% as either a PSA 9 or 10. Because of this, SSA cards also command a higher sale price than raw cards on other popular platforms, since they have been looked over by a third party in advance of the sale. Users are typically taking a calculated risk on getting that PSA 10 from an A, which happened 40% of the time in their December PSA submission.

StarStock B (mid-quality raw cards) and StarStock C (lower-quality raw cards) can be found on the site as well. The transparency is phenomenal, as you typically get an idea of exactly what you are purchasing before you buy. 

On the StarStock website there is a “Send in Cards” form. On this form, you will be asked some basic personal information and are given the option of uploading a list of the cards you are submitting. You are not required to do this, but the site says that, “organizing your submission by player and set will drastically speed up your processing time.”

The cost to submit a raw card is $.25 per card. There are no ingestion fees for submitting graded cards or sealed wax. Current submission times are currently 4-8 weeks for raw cards. Graded cards and wax are ingested in under 1 week. The ingestion time frame begins on the date the package was received from the post office, not the date it was delivered. 

Less than two years after their 2019 launch, StarStock has attracted quite a bit of attention, raising around $10 million dollars to take the company to the next level, while adding some big names to their list of investors. 

On December 7th, 2020 it was announced that StarStock had raised $1.3 million dollarsfrom NBA mega-star Kevin Durant, as well as NBA guard Matthew Dellavedova, Rich Kleiman of Thirty Five Ventures, FanDuel co-founders, Nigel and Lesley Eccles, Jeremy Levine of Founder’s First Fund and A.J. Vaynerchuk, co-founder of VaynerSports.

A few months later, an $8 million round of Series A funding was announced, this time led by Andreessen Horowitz, Atlanta Hawks star Trae Young, Twitch co-founder Justin Kan, BetMGM CEO, Ryan Spoon, and Ilkka Paanane, co-founder of Supercell.

“It’s unreal,” said Greenberg. “It’s an incredible feeling to have people who I respect immensely believe in our vision and invest in StarStock. It motivates me to continue building out a great marketplace and an amazing team to support it.”

StarStock has quite a bit of exciting news coming up in the near future, starting with the addition of vintage cards to their market and culminating in the launch of their app. 

“Last week, StarStock began accepting vintage cards,” Greenberg said. “Card collectors should be on the lookout for great vintage cards that are added to our marketplace over the next few months. In addition to the mobile app, we’ll be working on enhancing our marketplace and product landscape. We’re planning to launch the StarStock app by the end of 2021. We’re really excited about the app because it will be more user friendly and easily accessible.”