I am super excited to see you found this blog and am eager to welcome you to the Collexy family!
In this article, I will introduce Collexy, your future go-to platform for all your collectible needs.
Founder of Collexy
This is me! I am Tom, Belgian, 30 years old and the founder of Collexy.
Back in the day in primary school, I put my hands on some Base Set and Jungle booster packs to quickly open them and start my epic adventure in the Pokémon world. The negotiating, discovering and eventually trading of Pokémon cards with my fellow Pokémon enthousiasts was the pinnacle of my time spent on the school playground back then. It is a lovely tradition that I hope gets carried on by the next generation.
In the second half of 2016, the nostalgia drew me back in. Almost 8 years ago today! At the time, I had just finished my law degree and had enrolled in a second master. You might recall 2016 as the year in which Pokémon GO was released, crowds of hundreds of people chasing after a Snorlax that had just spawned 2 blocks further disrupting traffic… and this worldwide.
How my adventure started…
I remember 2016 as the year in which Pokémon GO was released. Sadly, at that time I was hospitalized with a cancer diagnosis. To cope with my inability to raid gyms, hunt Pokémon and complete my Pokédex, I turned to watching YouTube videos and Twitch streams… but the slow hospital internet did not allow for streaming. In the spur of the moment, I downloaded eBay, made an account and started searching for Pokémon cards.
Down the rabbit hole I went. A new, and lasting, obsession that would distract me from my 12 weeks of chemotherapy… and far beyond.
The first Pokémon cards I purchased to relive the nostalgia were cards with a specific stamp (for the more seasoned collectors the Prerelease (Staff) stamped cards). I graded these cards and treasure them as my most precious cards, not for their financial value but for their personal value to me. The Snorlax of Call of Legends and Leafeon of Undaunted are for me the representative cards of how I got back into collecting kickstarting my collecting adventure.
By mid-2017, I was considered cancer-free but the collectibles bug had bitten me: I continued collecting Pokémon cards and got intrigued by other collectibles like Yu-Gi-Oh cards, sports cards, comic books, and retro games. We were truly off to the races!
… and how it changed
As I continued happily collecting, COVID-19 hit Europe in early 2020. The pandemic had a huge impact on the world in general but also on the collectibles world. As the value of collectibles increased so did my need to manage them better. Due to the inaccuracy of collectible trackers, I decided to create and maintain Excel spreadsheets of my collectibles mapping every variant of collectible I owned. Not only was this time-consuming, it required a lot of discipline and dedication without a real structure. Errors were not rare resulting in frustration and inaccuracies.
As my collection grew, it was time to part with some of my collectibles and find them a new home. The valuation and pricing of the specific variants I owned proved to be extremely challenging as different price points were used, depending on whether you were the seller or buyer. This resulted in tiresome negotiations and sometimes even discussions on how to price the collectible. Additionally, no distinction was made between the different variants of a collectible, ignoring the different rarity, desirability and collectibility of each variant. The struggle to properly value the cards was real as I had to use multiple different websites just to get an idea.
Once a price range was established, I started selling the collectibles on marketplaces that apply very high buyer and seller fees and/or had no structure in place for a smooth selling process, with a lot of risk of getting scammed. Additionally, I had to redo the same repetitive and boring tasks for the same collectible over and over again: take pictures of the collectible, provide a description, provide the sale conditions, provide a shipping quote for every country (or when I was tired of this process a simple “Send me a DM for shipping”), and wait for approval of the listing. The process was time-consuming, repetitive, unpleasant and unrewarding.
I felt something had to be done to increase efficiency and accuracy in order for us to enjoy collecting and completing our collections.
Enter Collexy
I created Collexy as a solution for these challenges.
All of us identify as collectors and we express our hobby differently. Me as a collector, my focus is on rare variants as I enjoy the hunt in orde to complete my collections. Everyone collects in their own way, but we all have in common that we want to collect and track our collections accurately.
Collecting collectibles is only partly about the collectible itself. The rarity, desirability and the historical relevance of a specific variant of that collectible, and of course the hunt for these variants, are as important. For this reason, we made custom databases that power Collexy to provide an overview of all these different variants of a collectible for every single Pokémon card.
The databases are integrated in Collexy to make the processes as efficient and accurate as possible:
- Adding specific variants of a collectible: the process to add collectibles allows you to select the correct variant, not just simply the correct collectible, and this at an incredible speed.
- Collection tracker: you can freely select the parameters of your collection, after which Collexy determines all qualifying variants to then create your perfect collection(s).
- Collectible overview: Collexy functions as a central hub for all collectibles, both the collectibles you own, you collect and need.
- Sell basket: the sell basket provides an overview of the market, i.e. supply / demand and price / value, of that specific variant of the collectible, not a general undifferentiated overview of all the variants of the collectible.
Collexy integrates more features to reduce repetitive and cumbersome processes to allow us to focus on collecting and completing our collections:
- Transfer upon sale: once a successful sale is concluded on Collexy, the sold variants will be moved from the seller to the buyer, avoiding any repetitive tasks for the buyer to add the variants to their collection. They are immediately added to the buyer’s inventory, crosschecked with their collections and made ready to sell.
- Automated shipping calculation: the shipping methods are calculated by Collexy based on the seller’s country, buyer’s country and all other relevant parameters of the order to determine the different shipping options available.
- Third-party customer protection: Collexy is working together with a third-party customer protection, fully optional, to ensure that the orders are fully protected by an unbiased service.
More features will be added and we are looking forrward to your feedback on our current and future features.
Our mission and promise to you
At Collexy, my mission is to elevate your collecting experience to the next level. Collexy will make your processes more efficient and your collecting substantially more accurate. It is my goal that your time as a collector is as close to 100% spent on hunting rare variants, collecting and completing your collection goals.
It would be my privilege to assist you from the start to the end of your adventure in the collectibles world!
Collexy is built by myself, an avid collector, for collectors. I encourage and appreciate all feedback from you as collectors on [email protected]. I am keen to someday meet every single one of you to talk about our collectibles and our collection goals, and how Collexy can be your go-to partner in your collectibles journey.
Happy collecting!
Tom