What are your sports cards worth? Local father-son team help you find out with CollX app
Charlie Mann’s eyes looked like they were going to pop out of his head.
“We did?” the 10-year-old from Haddonfield asked when his father told him their app, CollX, had surpassed 200,000 users last Wednesday. “Yes!”
The mix of surprise and excitement nearly lifted him off his couch.
CollX launched in January as a visual recognition app that allowed users to take a picture of their sports cards and instantly find an average of their current market price.
Charlie never imagined so many people were struggling with the same issues he had when he started collecting during the pandemic.
“It’s really, really nice just to know that I’m helping people with this problem too,” he said.
Charlie came up with the idea last year. He was drawn into the hobby by watching videos of collectors pull expensive Pokémon cards online during the height of COVID.
He wanted in on the action too, so he began opening packs of his own. Then the questions came.
“I was getting it like every day,” his dad Ted said about Charlie asking him what his cards were worth.
Ted understood the feeling. He still remembers trading his father’s Mickey Mantle for a Greg Jefferies card growing up, not realizing the price difference between the two – “seemed like a brilliant at the time,” he smiled.
It’s even more difficult to get that info now.
“We tried all these different tools to look up the values (eBay, applications, social media), but we weren’t able to do it,” Ted explained. “It was very tedious. I tried showing him how a Beckett guide works, looking up sports cards, but going through a Beckett guide is like going through the phone book now.”
That’s when Charlie had a thought. Ted, who previously worked for Gannett for about 10 years and the Courier Post for roughly four, had spent the past decade working with image recognition software, starting up a pair of companies he’d later sell in SnipSnap, which allowed users to take pictures of physical coupons and digitize them, and Slyce, which gave people the opportunity to take a photo of a product and find it online or in a store such as Home Depot, which was one of his clients.
“You’re always talking about how image recognition works,” Charlie told his dad. “Wouldn’t it make it a lot easier and faster to find the card? And I’m like yeah, I think that would be a really good idea.”
Ted built Charlie a simple prototype that worked like a spreadsheet. Charlie loved it. So did his friends.
That’s when Ted decided to leave another startup he was working on to begin development of CollX.
The father-son duo realized they had something special soon after when a TikTok video of Charlie’s younger brother Gus showing their grandfather Peter how the app, which was not out yet, would work generated more than 100,000 views.
Now, the app has more than 20 million cards in its database between baseball, basketball, football, hockey, soccer and wrestling, and will launch Pokémon, Magic: The Gathering, and Yu-Gi-Oh! in the coming weeks.
CollX also recently acquired Card Dealer Pro, software for card dealers that helps them sell their cards.
It will have a booth at the 42nd annual National Sports Collectors Convention in Atlantic City this week as well.
Ted and Charlie are hoping this is just the start for them as they want to make it so CollX users can buy, sell, and trade on their app in the future.
“It’s definitely the most rewarding thing I’ve done professionally,” Ted said. “I think, honestly, it’s the coolest product I’ve had a chance to work on. It’s awesome to work with Charlie.”
It’s been just as rewarding watching other families connect too.
“I love what you’re doing with your son. I’ve been doing the app with my son. We’re really loving it,” he was told by former Purdue linebacker Jon Goldsberry, who spent time on three NFL rosters. “We’re having such a good time.”
“It’s definitely seems like it’s become a great way for parents and kids to bond over cards,” Ted added. “It’s kind of crossing over that generational divide.”
Josh Friedman has produced award-winning South Jersey sports coverage for the Courier Post, The Daily Journal and the Burlington County Times for more than a decade. If you have or know of an interesting story to tell, reach out on Twitter at @JFriedman57 or via email at jfriedman2@gannettnj.com. You can also contact him at 856-486-2431. Help support local journalism with a subscription.
This article originally appeared on Cherry Hill Courier-Post: CollX app helps you determine value of sports cards
