Courtyard launched a new product category today, but the bigger shift is in rhythm. The platform has moved from occasional Pokémon grail events to something closer to a daily bounty schedule across Pokémon, football and, from this week, footwear.
Sneakers join the vending machines
The $275 Courtyard Sneakers Pack is Courtyard's first category outside cards, watches, comics and coins. Pulls are authenticated deadstock Nike and Jordan pairs, with examples cited including the Jordan 1 High Off-White Chicago, the Mars Yard 2.0 and the Nike SB Air Force 1 "Pink Foam" Friends and Family. As with cards, you can keep, ship, vault, or sell back at fair market value.
"The worst case scenario is a keeper and the best is a grail," co-founder and CEO Nico Le Jeune said in the launch announcement. The same release claims the business has grown from $50,000 in monthly transaction volume in January 2024 to a $2 billion annualized run rate today.
Press Start is underway
The sneakers arrive on day three of Press Start, Courtyard's Pokémon 30th anniversary programme, which runs September 14 to 22. One new pack drops each day, themed to the classic games from Red through Gold, Silver and Crystal. Each pack carries five hidden bounty cards, and holding a bounty through the September 22 deadline unlocks sealed anniversary product: Celebrations ETBs, Ultra Premium Collections and Pokémon Center ETBs.
The week's top grail is a 2016 20th Anniversary Pikachu EX 1st Edition Full Art PSA 10, listed at $8,610.70 fair market value. Courtyard has not published individual pack prices in the announcement, so check each day's drop on the site.
This is the second Pokémon bounty programme of the season. The Amazing Chase Returns ran five daily packs from July 27, priced from $19 for The Classics to $99 for The Final Stop, with 20 bounties worth the card plus 100,000 points each. "The response to the first Amazing Chase was too good not to run it back," Courtyard said at the time. "This time, we're going bigger."
Football, every Monday
With the NFL season under way, Courtyard has started dropping Monday Night Game Packs: a 24-hour pack every Monday, themed to that week's matchup, seeded with bounty cards that pay Courtyard Points if held through the deadline. Football packs are also being restocked with new inventory throughout the season, with fall football raffles teased.
The numbers
CoinDesk's August 11 piece on tokenized Pokémon cards, citing DeFiLlama, put Courtyard at roughly $139 million in 30-day volume and about $48 million in annualized fees. Collector Crypt was lower on volume at $77.8 million but higher on annualized fees at $148.2 million, which says a lot about the two platforms' fee structures.
Buyback terms are unchanged: 90% of fair market value for cards and comics, 95% for watches.
What to watch
Courtyard Rewards, launched at the end of June, is the connective tissue for all of this. Points from bounties feed tier status, and tier status unlocks monthly free packs, Guaranteed Value Packs and shipping credits. The more categories Courtyard adds, the more that loop matters. Whether sneakers find the same repeat buyers as graded cards is the open question for the quarter.
