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Chris Knape
Chris Knape is the CEO and co-founder of Rare Candy, a marketplace and toolkit for trading card collectors that has scanned more than five million cards. He spent a decade inside marketplaces and platforms - YouTube, Google Play, Thumbtack, Tempo - before turning a pandemic-era return to childhood card collecting into a venture-backed company built alongside Pokemon YouTuber Leonhart. Raised on a sailboat in the US Virgin Islands and trained at Dartmouth, BCG, and the youngest-manager ranks of early YouTube, he now spends his days authenticating, auctioning, and tracking the cards that nerds love.
CollX
CollX is a Philadelphia-area startup whose mobile app lets collectors snap a photo of a sports or trading card and instantly identify it and see its current market value. Built around AI visual search trained on a database of more than 17 million cards, CollX has grown from a quick valuation tool into a full collection-management platform and peer-to-peer marketplace where over 3 million users scan, organize, price, buy, sell, and trade cards. The company monetizes through Pro and Gold subscriptions, marketplace commissions, and referral revenue from hobby partners like PSA, Whatnot, and Fanatics.