This App Could Make Filipino Card Collectors Rich

Xure is a Manila-based and Singapore-registered collectors' app that aims to be the ultimate marketplace/ecosystem that connects collectors globally with their equally obsessed counterparts across the pond.

It's no secret Pokémon cards are quickly becoming another form of investment for twenty- or thirty-something-year-olds who grew up with the IPs. These cards at their most ludicrously expensive go for millions of dollars based on rarity. This is a lot like the luxury goods or watch space that sees goods fluctuate to 5x the value of their pieces based on what the culture dictates.

Kids nowadays are making serious dough flipping Pokémon, NBA, and now collectibles from the most watched and most popular anime in the world, One Piece.

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We got to briefly chat with Joseph Sarmiento, the founder and chief executive officer of the company that could change the game in how we do business in the collectible industry and how far that shiny Mewtwo card you had as a kid can take you.

The Philippine collectibles market is massive, estimated to be worth around $5 to $6 billion.

"I have this friend (who's) selling (a card) for P20 million," he told Esquire Philippines on the sidelines of a press conference in San Juan City that aimed to showcase Filipino collectors to an international audience.

"We'll be expecting it in the auction."

The card in question is a One Piece Red Luffy manga print, graded near perfect.

Sarmiento earlier said that his company is targeting about 500 accredited Xstores made up of both local and international sellers, which will drive growth in its user base via the planned expanded collectible categories.

Xure started in 2023 and largely dealt with luxury goods initially, a genesis that took inspiration from his wife buying a luxury bag off a secondary market during the pandemic and being handed a piece of paper as proof of authenticity.

Startups aspiring to be the go-to marketplace for collectors isn't anything new, as we previously covered the ambitious e-commerce platform Toki, which halted its operations last year due to "challenges that needed deeper engagement with compliance and regulatory matters."

Toki had raised around P105 million in seed funding backed by early-stage venture capital firms Kaya Founders and Foxmont Capital Partners to feature more than 100,000 items such as vintage sneakers, Lego, Funko Pops, and the ever-popular Pokémon and sports cards.

Xure holds that same ambition but with the goal of plugging all the other gaps found in Facebook Marketplace and Carousel deals that often go sideways due to miscommunication and shipping concerns.

Once an item is sold, the platform handles shipping on the seller's behalf, cutting down on the laborious process of going out to third-party shipping services.

"If you send it to eBay or to a middleman outside, it's very costly, and you don't even know if you're happy with the price you'll get," Sarmiento said. "Here, we set the price, and it's in the Philippines."

The platform also runs on what it calls a Bid Deposit, requiring bidders to put down a percentage of an item's starting bid before they're allowed to bid at all. The standard is about 20 percent of the starting bid.

"There will be no joy bidders; there will be no scammers," he said. "That cannot happen on Facebook, because it's just chat. There's no other platform that does the bid deposit."

A first-of-its-kind system that could deter a lot of the nuisances associated with trying to get something like a LeBron James rookie card.

Probably the most common way of trying your luck to get highly sought-after cards is joining "box breaks" to get "hits" from collectors' packs and giant booster boxes facilitated via livestream.

So what happens is that a sealed box is split among multiple buyers who each get a random pull.

"Others say it's just friends who want to buy one box and share it amongst themselves. Others, when kids are already purchasing and trying to get lucky to get a one-of-one, that's different," he said. "We don't encourage them joining that kind of box-breaking."

Each listing on Xure also goes through a stringent vetting process via the ecosystem's diverse community-nominated authenticators and "Xperts" deputized by the platform after being put forward by collectors themselves.

Since launching about three years ago, the app has posted more than 8,000 registered users and is among six startups selected for the 13th cohort of the IdeaSpace Startup Accelerator Program backed by the MVP Group of Companies.

Sarmiento encapsulates this "run by collectors" thing to a whole new level as he noted that Xure is backed by a lot of passionate collectors who are deeply tapped into the gripes and hopes surrounding the industry.

The platform's first curated auction, the One of One Xure Auction, runs on a build-up window rather than a single event, with cards going live for bidding on the first of August and a finale on the day itself, the eighth of August.

Ahead of this, Xure has also been sourcing cards from collectors in Visayas and Mindanao, which Sarmiento frames as leveling access for sellers outside Metro Manila who've historically lacked a direct route to bigger buyers.

"Getting those cards nationwide, those kept cards in Visayas and Mindanao, to be sent here and to actually showcase them to the global collector," he said.

The app is also curating the lineup of pieces themselves and keeping starting bids low to ease the barrier to entry and make bidding more attractive and accessible.

Xure is also betting huge on the international market, as it has already positioned itself as a digital partner for major TCG, or trading card game, conventions across Southeast Asia via running registration and payments for attendees as a way to bring new users into the app.

The August 8 auction is seen by Sarmiento as a bridge to collectors in the US, Canada, and Southeast Asia rather than just purely a domestic-only deal.

Xure is building itself up with a more robust infrastructure to make the case that Filipino collectors deserve a seat at the global table. It just needs more people from all realms of the collecting world to show up and bid.

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