Palantir Is Transforming Physical Collectibles Into The Digital World
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Everything in the physical world is going digital. Whether it's fortune 500 companies looking to adopt a digital data-driven strategy or companies that have used legacy systems for the past decades that need to modernize how they even approach their businesses, everyone is looking for the most optimal way to transform.
Palantir announced a new partnership with Beckett Collectibles, the most trusted name in the collectibles industry that validates and values collectibles for buyers and sellers.
If you had ever bought a rookie Michael Jordan card, it could be worth millions today because of how rare those cards are and how amazing of a legacy Michael Jordan left. However, companies need to exist to be the intermediary in making sure the exchange of value between a physical card and a buyer is authentic compared against whatever the market would value it as.
Beckett has been doing this for decades, and is now deciding to become a more integrated, digitally native company to do what they have done in a more efficient way.
From the PR,
"Beckett has already begun integrating legacy systems into Palantir Foundry, allowing customers to more rapidly and easily access decades of data about cards, comics, and other collectibles, as well as automating the process of grading and authenticating. Beckett aims to eventually have the most comprehensive data set in the collectibles space and the hobby community, across comics, cards, VHS, and other assets
Foundry will serve as the backend management platform for all collectibles on Beckett, from physical cards to NFTs. Already, Foundry's data-integration capabilities have successfully completed the migration of Beckett's vast historical data to a modern operating system configured to display real-time information. Beckett will also use Palantir’s software to build internal and end-user apps for card digitization, digital tracking, and value assessment."
Why This Is Good for Palantir
This news was interesting to me because it reinforced another vertical Palantir was able to operate with. My investment thesis has always been around believing their software could power any company in any industry because data is the universal force that Palantir can use to bring value to any industry.
The collectibles industry was the last one I thought that could somehow find value in Palantir's product, but again, they have.
Centralizing decades worth of data on collectibles and figuring out how to value them as new digital assets like NFTs or even being able to add additional metrics of security and valuation on top of the physical assets because of stronger data applications is something Foundry can uniquely provide to this industry.
“Today’s Beckett customers expect speed, reliability, and trust, and that’s what Palantir’s Foundry offers,” said Kunal Chopra, CEO of Beckett. “We have an incredible wealth of data in our company, and with Palantir’s help, we’ll bring decades of data to our customer’s fingertips in a way that’s fast and secure. A backend rebuild that might have taken four to six months took only six weeks thanks to Palantir Foundry. This partnership is an important step in our effort to build a one-stop-shop platform for collectors to manage their portfolio of alternative investments.”
It's another sign that more and more companies doing incredibly important things but in extremely old and ineffective ways could find value in Palantir. If they are able to make a 6 month process take 6 weeks, there is a massive time to value advantage there that Palantir is uniquely positioned to solve.
The challenge, like always, is getting more of these companies to even know what Palantir is. Beckett is within the top 3 of it's category, if more companies in the space see their new success as a result of using Palantir, it further serves as a case study for them to also inquire about Palantir and how they could implement something like Foundry for their businesses.
“We were excited by Beckett’s digital transformation objectives and to help the company unlock the value of long held assets,” said Meredith McNaughton, the head of Palantir’s Foundry for Builders program, which provides Palantir’s platform to early and growth stage companies. “The Foundry platform is uniquely positioned to catalyze real operational transformation. We’re energized by Beckett’s quick progress and to support their growth in the collectibles space.”
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