A new Chicago startup is using artificial intelligence to make collecting trading and sports cards less of a chore and more of a hobby once again.
Founded in 2021 by husband-and-wife Brian Ludden and Heather Denniston, Ludex values and identifies sports and trading cards of all kinds through an app.
An avid collector himself, Ludden wanted to share his love with his son but found the process of finding the current value of his son's Derek Jeter 1993 Upper Deck rookie card both tedious and archaic. He founded Ludex as a way for anyone, both experienced collectors and those new to card collecting, to scan and price their baseball, basketball, football, Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering cards alike.
It's pretty easy to identify 75% of the cards out there — the problem is the other fourth, according to Denniston.
"The biggest challenge is identifying more modern cards that have different colors and refractors and the price variation is very broad. It could be a $25 card or a $2,500 card base upon a nuance," she said.
The Chicago-based startup announced an $8 million seed capital raise this week with investors that include Hall of Fame Chicago Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher.
Funded through friends and family to this point, Denniston admitted that it's been "a grind" to raise money right now as the startup looks to close the round with a strategic partner in the VC space.
"As soon as we realized that we were going to extend the seed round last fall, we found a very difficult climate when we went back out there," she told Chicago Inno. "We had to do a little reduction to pivot."
While the grind has become "less arduous and painful" since the fall, the company had to reduce its head count to accommodate how long it took for Ludex to get to market and to monetize the platform.
Now hiring once again, Ludex, which is currently located at 223 W. Erie in Chicago's River North neighborhood, has been helped by the recent hype and momentum around artificial intelligence, though that may have also bred more competitors.
"There's a handful of folks out there now trying to do what we do, and I think we're probably about a year-and-a-half to two years ahead of any new players coming in," she said.
The app officially launched in November and has since grown its community to more than 200,000 users.
Moving forward, Ludex wants to become an all-encompassing one-stop shop for card collections, including adding more verticals.
"We're adding comic books and all of the other things that people collect like shoes, watches, luxury handbags, you name it," she said.
