Bufordsecurity 
By DAVIDDE CORRAN and BOBBY CAINA CALVAN Associate Press
A plain brown brick building tucked away in a nondescript block of a Delaware street probably wouldn’t have gotten much attention if it weren’t for the razor wire and armed guards outside. prize.
Not Fort Knox. However, the stash of collectibles the building holds is definitely worth defending.
There’s a rare Pikachu card and a 100-year-old baseball great Honus Wagner card that recently sold for $7.25 million in a private sale. In addition to trading cards, there are baseball bats and basketball his shoes, including sneakers worn and signed by the late NBA great Kobe Bryant.
A total of $200 million in collectibles are stored in the building’s two vaults, equipped with some of the latest technology to keep your precious cash safe from harm and thieves.
“Many people don’t keep their jewelry at home. It’s probably in a safe bank,” said CEO Ross Hoffman.Goldin Co. is committed to protecting collectibles. It is a division of industry-leading Collectors, which operates vaults, high-security facilities dedicated to .
Collectors Vault CEO Ross Hoffman shows off the shoes worn and signed by NBA legend Kobe Bryant in Delaware on October 21, 2022. This footwear is his one of hundreds of items stored in the Collector’s Vault, a new attempt to make it easier for collectors to store and trade memorabilia. (AP Photo/Davidde Corran)APs
There are no signs on the building, and the company asked not to divulge any hint of its location. It is equipped with a seismic motion detector that sounds an alarm.
To move from room to room, security guards will guide you through card-activated double door entrances and close the first door before passing the next. There are surveillance cameras everywhere.
Behind one of the two 3,400-kilogram (7,500-lb)-thick vault doors are rows of shelves that extend down to the rafters of the building. Row after row of boxes filled with collector’s items. Some of them have relatively low monetary value, but others represent sentimental value to their owners, and sometime they are worth more.
Hoffmann called the facility a “pain reliever.”
“There’s the pain of losing things. It’s the pain of having things stolen,” Hoffman said.
Interest in sporting goods and memorabilia has surged in recent years, not only for big ticket items, but also for rediscovered pieces hidden in attics and basements. baseball card sells for $12.6 million, topping $9.3 million for the jersey Diego Maradona wore when he scored the controversial ‘Hand of God’ goal at the 1986 World Cup I was.
Comic Connect founder Steven Fischler has seen the collectible trade grow and become more profitable. the entire auction house.
But some people don’t want to take responsibility for securing their property, Fischler said. These storage facilities help to better liquidate collectibles by treating them as assets that can be bought and sold more easily.
Hoffmann, whose parent company runs one of the leading grading and certification services, said his latest venture is endorsement of the big money currently involved in collectibles.
According to a 2018 Forbes interview, the pre-pandemic sports memorabilia market was estimated at over $5.4 billion. Collectable.com.
Research firm Market Decipher predicts that market will grow to $26 billion by 2021, and the market will grow astronomically to $227 billion within a decade. This is a digital collectible with a unique data encryption fingerprint.
No vaults are needed to store digitized NFTs, but the physical collectibles trade is expected to remain busy and lucrative.
“For a lot of people who buy cards, they’re going to sell it,” Hoffman said.
