Recently, Courtyard, a digital collectible card platform based in New York, announced the completion of a $30 million Series A funding round led by consumer tech-focused venture capital giant Forerunner Ventures, with continued support from existing shareholders NEA and Y Combinator. This round of funding will be used for team expansion, marketing, and product development to further consolidate the platform's leading position in the new track of "NFT + physical assets + high-frequency circulation". Courtyard is one of the fastest-growing digital collectible startups: in early 2024, its monthly sales were just $50,000, but by July 2025, the platform's monthly turnover had surged to $50 million, achieving a hundredfold explosive growth.
01 | Deconstructing Blind Box Logic: How to Create a Liquid "Digital Savings Account" with "Buyback + Zero Fees"
The global collectibles market exceeds $400 billion, but has long been plagued by shipping delays and counterfeit goods. Courtyard enters the market with a "blind box + NFT" model, combining blockchain with physical custody to reconstruct the collectibles trading scene.
Users pay $25 to $100 on the platform to purchase Pokémon or sports card blind boxes. The system "randomly" assigns cards from the platform's own physical vault, and users can check the probability of drawing mid-to-high-value cards before opening the box. If a user draws an unsatisfactory card, the platform immediately offers two options: one, buyback at 90% of the market price; two, list it on Courtyard's secondary market for auction or resale without any fees. Notably, an average card on the platform changes hands eight times a month, creating a liquidity pool similar to a "current account", and this highly gamified high-frequency trading mechanism makes Courtyard the first platform designed for "liquidity".
Cards can either be kept in the platform's vault or sent to users, and most users do not realize they are purchasing an NFT—which represents a specific card and can circulate and be authenticated on the blockchain. The platform's "low consumer threshold + flexible exit mechanism" strategy significantly lowers the barrier to entry for collecting, transforming this "old-school hobby" into "short-term trading".
02 | Algorithm Engine + NFT Endorsement: Building a Blockchain Collectibles "Casino System"
Courtyard connects the global card supply chain upstream and aggregates digital collectors' communities downstream. Its content side sources high-grade cards from channels like Fanatics, eBay, and CGC, with the world's largest collectibles storage service provider Brink’s offering full-chain physical custody. All cards generate 3D digital twin NFTs, authenticated and blockchain-certified by experts, with physical backing redeemable at any time.
On the operational side, Courtyard has built a "trade-custody-buyback" closed loop, using machine learning to dynamically adjust the content ratio of blind boxes to balance user experience and platform revenue. In terms of pricing, it tracks real-time market conditions on eBay and other markets to accurately calculate the "fair market price" of cards, supporting its 90% market price buyback promise.
In terms of user incentives, the platform has created a "Collector's Monthly Leaderboard", a points system, and a membership rewards scheme to further enhance repurchase and participation rates, continuously mastering user preferences and trading models to build data barriers and algorithmic advantages. The entire business flywheel is clear: low-threshold blind boxes attract users - marketized buybacks reduce risk - cards accumulate in the platform's asset pool - zero fees promote secondary trading - data feeds the supply-side pricing system - continuously nourishing blind box content design and profit model. This "tradable digital asset" mechanism and gambling system share many similarities, with the platform profiting through arbitrage, trading frequency, and scarcity expectations.
03 | From Google to Christie's? The Venture Capital Line Behind Courtyard's Blind Box Team
Courtyard was co-founded in 2021 by former Google and Apple executives—Nicolas le Jeune and Paulin Andurand. CEO le Jeune, responsible for platform business and financing, previously led user growth and digital content operations at YouTube, excelling in building growth strategies for the consumer market; CTO Andurand, with eight years of system architecture experience at Apple, spearheaded the technical design of the "physical custody + blockchain trading" model.
The duo forms a "growth + technology" dual-core team, leading Courtyard to be selected for the 2022 Y Combinator incubator program, subsequently continuing to receive top-tier venture capital support from NEA and Forerunner. NEA, one of the world's oldest VCs, has long focused on the Web3 and digital asset fields, investing in platforms like START; Forerunner Ventures, a representative institution in the consumer tech track, has early investments in DTC stars like Glossier and Warby Parker, managing assets over $3 billion.
Courtyard's strategic vision clearly extends beyond just a "card platform"; it is redefining the value circulation mechanism of collectibles with "redeemable NFTs" as tokens. By breaking the structural problem of non-circulation of physical collectibles with financial attributes and leveraging algorithmic blind boxes to shift from long-term holding to high-frequency trading—this may well be the "investment entertainment" revolution in the eyes of Generation Z.
When a Jordan rookie card can be traded on the platform like a gambling chip, Courtyard is not just a card market; it resembles a new type of casino prototype leading to the "blockchainization of real assets". Its ultimate goal may be to become the "blockchain Christie's" connecting the NFT world with the real asset market.
