Courtyard.io

Courtyard.io operates a marketplace and tokenization service for physical collectibles, including graded sports and Pokémon trading cards, comics, coins, and watches. Users buy digital packs that are opened ("pack rips") to reveal the underlying physical items, which are held in insured vault storage. Holders can keep an item vaulted, list it on the marketplace, request shipment to their home, or sell it back instantly at a guaranteed price stated by the company as 90% of market value.

The platform represents vaulted collectibles onchain, which the company says provides transparent transaction and ownership history, worldwide instant buying and selling without physically moving items, access to both credit card and crypto payments, and the ability for collectors to discover and bid on items that are not actively listed. Vaulted storage and insurance are provided at no additional charge, and the company advertises 0% marketplace fees and no sales tax on vault transactions. Documentation also covers asset redemption and shipping, KYC processes, grading, and account management. Following its July 2025 Series A, Courtyard said it was expanding beyond Pokémon and sports cards into comics and additional categories and launching a mobile app available for pre-order on iOS and Android.

Founding story

The company was founded in 2021 by Nicolas le Jeune, co-founder and CEO, who previously spent more than eight years in sales and partnerships at Google and YouTube, and Paulin Andurand, co-founder and CTO, who spent eight years as a software engineer at Apple.

Business model

Courtyard.io sells digital packs containing physical collectibles and operates a secondary marketplace for the vaulted items. It advertises 0% marketplace fees for buyers and sellers and states that its onchain approach lets it keep seller fees lower than traditional web marketplaces, with no sales tax on vault transactions. Vaulted storage and insurance are offered free to users, and the company offers an instant sell-back option at 90% of market value.

Traction

Courtyard reported growing from $50,000 per month to $50 million per month in GMV as of its July 2025 Series A announcement. Y Combinator lists a team size of 90. An earlier company blog post noted roughly 1,000 cards vaulted at Brink's when the first version of the website launched.

Latest developments

In July 2025 Courtyard announced a $30 million Series A led by Forerunner Ventures with participation from NEA, Y Combinator, Burst Capital, Prelude Ventures, and ParaFi Capital, to be used for team scaling, expansion into new product categories such as comics, and the launch of its mobile app. Subsequent company blog posts describe the launch of trading on Courtyard and a promotion placing an $87,000 Rolex across its packs.