Courtyard Hit $10m Monthly Sales Volumes

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Courtyard’s Physical-to-Digital Innovation 🎴

Courtyard might be one of the most slept-on projects in the space.

In a world where critics still feel crypto and blockchain are too speculative and don’t solve real-world problems, this example is a perfect rebuttal.

Let’s quickly touch on what Courtyard is, first and foremost, before getting into why I think it’s exciting.

• Courtyard sells NFTs that are underpinned by physical collectibles (Sports trading cards for example).

• You can send your collectibles to Courtyard, and they hold them for you in a vault, secured by BRINKS, while issuing you an NFT on their platform.

• If you trade that NFT, the blockchain shows you no longer have ownership of the underlying physical asset.

• If you want to redeem the physical item, your NFT is ‘burned’ and you are shipped it.

The model is simple and brilliant, adding liquidity, verification and safety to a historically illiquid market, marred by fraud and slowed by grading and verification.

Real world assets are a big trend in the crypto space — and sports collectibles are no different. Whether it’s dollars, bonds, real estate or collectibles — the efficiency and trustless nature of the the blockchain can reduce friction for what are usually slow and crude processes.

Courtyard’s model also means you as the collector do not need to hold the assets physically yourself, as the NFT acts as a receipt of ownership. This also reduces the need for peer-to-peer shipping, which is an additional friction point that may also damage the physical goods in the process. And, the exchange of ownership is instantaneous on the blockchain. That sounds pretty good to me.

It’s faster, cheaper, safer, trustless, verifiable and has better portability — it’s no surprise that the platform is doing well. They also give a 1% revenue share every time your vaulted card is sold and resold, giving users an additional incentive to send their cards in for vaulting.

Sports memorabilia in the U.S. alone was valued at $27bn+ in 2023 by Statista, forecasting growth to $32bn+ by 2031.

One additional benefit of Courtyard is that, like eBay, they do not require any licensing deals — something that has halted the speed and innovation of Web3 sports businesses in the past due to them being such a huge cost sink.

Data and Growth 📈 

The numbers over the last 12 months are staggering.

In January 2024, Courtyard saw monthly sales volumes of ~$50,000.

That grew to ~$10.5m 12 months later, in December 2024.

So far in January (27th Jan 2025) — they have already surpassed that with almost $12m in monthly sales volume.

Now it’s unclear if this is primary and secondary market sales combined (that is my presumption) — Courtyard’s 6% seller fee still sees them driving huge revenues monthly.