2019 Bowman Chrome X Baseball Launches Through Exclusive StockX IPO

StockX has only been in the sports card business for a few weeks, but they already have their first exclusive product. 2019 Bowman Chrome X Baseball offers a different look on some of the year’s top rookies and prospects. But what’s really different is how collectors buy them.

Like other exclusive products StockX sells through their marketplace, 2019 Bowman Chrome X is following a stock market model.

“The IPO model on StockX, it’s premised on this idea that products shouldn’t be released at an arbitrary resale price,” says StockX co-founder and CEO, Josh Luber. “Products should be released at whatever their true market price is.”

Ultimately, it’s buyers and collectors who are setting the price and making the market, right from the outset. There’s no suggested retail price or minimum advertised price. Rather, it’s all based on what collectors are willing to pay.

Setting the Price: How the StockX 2019 Bowman Chrome X IPO Works

2019 Bowman Chrome X is a StockX Initial Product Offering (IPO). Starting Monday, October 28 and running through Wednesday, October 30 (8PM EST), the company will take blind bids on single-card boxes and five-box cases.

Potential buyers will have no idea what others are willing to pay. Some will stay low, others will go high to ensure they get some of the product.

After the IPO sales window closes, the price is established, which is separate for both boxes and cases. There are 1,100 boxes being offered so the top 1,100 bids are accepted. They represent the most people are willing to pay.

However, all qualifying bids pay the same price. It’s not the highest, second highest or even 100th highest. In this example, it’ll be the 1,100th bid (or however many boxes and cases are offered). Everyone pays what the lowest accepted bid is.

This is called the clearing price.

It’s the same process for the 400 cases of 2019 Bowman Chrome X being offered. The 400th top bid is the one that’ll be the clearing price for these.

“It is truly a fair market price because all…of those people, in their own free will, were all willing to pay at least the clearing price. It was a blind auction,” explains Luber. “You didn’t have to beat somebody. There was no rush to do it at the last minute. It’s just whatever you’re willing to pay for it.”

The Art of a Deal

For most of the winning bids, it means paying less than what they were willing to. So there’s a sense of getting a deal for many as well.

Luber points to a recent IPO for exclusive Adidas sneakers where over 95 percent of the winning buyers paid less than what they were willing to.

He is excited to see how the model will work with trading cards.

“This is revolutionary. This doesn’t exist. No one else sells consumer goods this way. People sell financial products this way all the time. So what we’re doing is trying to take that to consumer goods,” said Luber. “We’ve done this for the other products we sell like sneakers, but, man, there’s no better product for this than trading cards.”

2019 Bowman Chrome X Baseball Basics

So what exactly are the cards that are part of StockX’s first trading card IPO?

2019 Bowman Chrome X Baseball is essentially a partial parallel of cards from 2019 Bowman Chrome Baseball. A total of 100 cards get the exclusive Green X-Fractor treatment, 35 rookies and 65 prospects. Pete Alonso, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Fernando Tatis Jr., Jo Adell, Victor Victor Mesa and Joey Bart are among the standouts. And, yes, Tim Tebow is on the checklist as well. All cards hold onto the same card number as the main set.

Those that buy a five-box case are guaranteed to get one of 20 top players:

Image: StockX

Every 2019 Bowman Chrome X Green X-Fractor is numbered to 31 copies. They also come already graded by PSA with everything being a Mint PSA 9 or Gem Mint PSA 10.

Boxes and cases from the Bowman Chrome X IPO are shipped to buyers still sealed. There is an additional cost for shipping, which starts at $9.95 for US buyers and more for international.

StockX Expanding Into Sports Cards

The 2019 Bowman Chrome X IPO is just one way that StockX is expanding into sports cards. Much like how it has done with sneakers, the company is looking to be a disrupter for the secondary market.

Earlier in October, the company launched their trading card marketplace. It acts to connect buyers and sellers that aims to be easier and safer than eBay. Not only that, but Luber looks at StockX as a completely different experience.

“At the core, StockX is built on how the stock market works,” he said.

“If you go and want to buy a Luka [Doncic] rookie PSA 10 and you search on eBay, you’ll get a hundred results, a thousand results,” Luber explains. “There’s all sorts of people selling Luka Prizm rookies and then you have to decide if you want to buy from this guy or that guy or look at where they’re located. Why is this one $80 and this one’s $75? What’s the shipping on this? Is it an auction or am I just buying? All these different things.”

Getting StockX into trading cards is personal for Luber.

“I collected cards before I collected sneakers,” he said. “I have the most typical card story ever. I’m 41-years old so my heyday of cards was ’87 to ’92 and the whole Junk Wax Era there. All my cards have been sitting in my parent’s basement for the last 25 years.”

One place where Luber did specialize in his early collecting days was Willie Mays. He points to a 1952 Topps Mays being his prized card.

“It’s been super exciting in the last year for me,” Luber noted. “Even though I’m the co-founder and we have over a thousand people at StockX, I personally wanted to be way more involved in this for personal reasons.”

Simplifying Buying and Selling

With StockX, everything is listed in one place. 2018-19 Panini Prizm Luka Doncic Rookie Cards get one page. From there, collectors can see what the current price for one is in a variety of grades. They can buy or sell from that one product page. Prices may change but, like stocks, there’s only one.

“If you want to buy a share of Nike stock, there’s not a thousand people selling Nike stock. There’s one ticker symbol. There’s one market price for Nike stock,” says the StockX CEO. “You’d never buy a share of Nike stock from the New York Stock Exchange and then go home and your friend’s like, ‘I got that cheaper on Amazon.’ No. There’s one price for that. And so there’s one page for a [Prizm] Luka PSA 10 rookie. And everything happens at that one page.

“That’s how we create a true market value for our cards — by bringing everything to one place.”

Authentication

When someone buys something from StockX, whether it’s a card, pair of sneakers or any of the other expanding number of categories, the seller sends it to one of the company’s six authentication centers around the world. The company checks to see that not only that the item is real, but that it’s represented properly and in the right condition.

Because StockX is only dealing with items graded by BGS and PSA when it comes to trading cards, authentication is a little easier. Still, the same process applies. StockX will check to see that slabs haven’t been damaged and there’s no sign of tampering.

Future StockX Trading Card IPOs?

While Luber wasn’t able to confirm specifics on any future StockX exclusives, he did say that’s he’s spoken with several manufacturers and that the response has been positive.

He also hinted that potential future IPOs could use a model where buyers will be able to have their cards kept on site at StockX and they could then flip them through a process similar day trading.

For some collectors, going through an IPO process and having cards stored off site might sound similar to eTopps, which debuted almost 20 years ago. When the program shut down in 2012, it meant a lot of users have had their cards sitting in a warehouse ever since.

A lifelong card collector himself, Luber is very aware of eTopps. But if StockX is going to enter a day-trading model for cards, he wants to make sure history doesn’t repeat itself.

“I’ve had some interesting conversations with the guys at Topps about eTopps,” Luber said. “A lot of it was just my personal curiosity and I hope that if we go down that path that we can learn from their lessons and make it a better experience.

“There will be different parameters around that understanding how much you can store, how long you can store it for, all that sort of stuff.”

2019 Bowman Chrome X Baseball Checklist