Mann of CollX joins ‘The Chase’

By David Yarger

Co-Host “The Chase”

Another Monday means another edition of “The Chase” is in the books. 

Monday morning, the crew got to chat with CEO and Co-Founder of CollX Ted Mann. Mann helped start up the new app, which is a hit for anybody in the hobby. 

With CollX, you have the ability to scan your cards with your phone and look up comps and values of said cards. You can even buy, sell and trade cards with other collectors on the app. 

The app, which was created in January, has seen substantial growth over just a few months. At the time of broadcast, the app had over 266,000 users. Mann said the following has been surreal. 

“We’ve grown fast. We have a whole community of people,” Mann said. “It’s been great. I started this app just … trying to help my 10-year-old son who was getting frustrated trying to look up his cards. So it was born just trying solve that personal problem that he had.”

From just wanting to help his son, Charlie, the app then expanded to his local community and then across the country, as the app helped people who were also struggling with the same issue. 

Now, with CollX, once you take a photo of your card, it will pull up, what Mann called “the drawer,” which is essentially a huge inventory of that matched card. You get a chance to see the graded and raw prices, which he said is great ease of access for card show goers.

For Mann, he said it’s his fourth tech start up and quite possibly his most enjoyable, because of the sentimental value the app holds with him and his family. 

“Getting to do it with my son and exposing to not just the fun stuff … but also the actual nuts and bolts of how you build these features, how you design it, how you figure out the technology side of it. I’m trying my hardest to expose him to all that and he’s loving it,” Mann said. 

Mann admitted he had a collecting background as a young kid and said it was neat to combine a passion for collecting and integrate it with his passion for technology.

“I got into collecting cards because I liked the players, I liked the pictures, I liked having them. And then I would do some trades at school and get mad that I traded away (certain players),” Mann said. 

He recalled a time where he traded a Mickey Mantle rookie card that ended up being a bad deal, and this led him to searching for values of cards. Thirty years later, he said his son deals with some of the same issues he did while collecting, and now this app helps him not accept bad deals, he said with a laugh. 

Additionally, CollX joins the card app market with a few competitors such as Alt and Card Ladder. Mann said there were a couple things that stood out in his app that differ from the others. 

“We have, I think, the biggest database of sports cards of any app. So we track about 20 million cards across football, baseball, basketball, hockey and soccer,” Mann said. “Other apps like Alt, which is fantastic by the way, Alt is a great experience; But they don’t really track everything. They only track a small subset. So you can really find almost any card on CollX.”

Mann also mentioned that the community of people is a compelling piece to the app, where collectors can go back and forth with each other to strike deals for their cards. 

Mann added, the app will be diving into the TCG realm in the near future, as well. 

To find more on CollX, visit their website, download the app on the app store, or check out their social media including their TikTok, which Mann hyped up. 

Also on “The Chase” …

• Over the weekend, the bidding for the SGC 9.5 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card sold for $12.6 million. The “finest example” broke the record for most expensive sports item. Currently, according to the Heritage Auction site, the new owner is currently listening to some offers, but the initial offer is set to $18.9 million. Whether anyone will put in an offer is unknown. 
• The NFL preseason concluded this weekend, meaning teams will be cutting down their rosters for opening weekend. On the set, Troy and myself named a few players with big preseasons that could potentially light up the hobby in the near future. Some players noted include Kenny Pickett, Malik Willis, Desmond Ridder and George Pickens. 
• And as always, we had our box rip giveaway of 2022 Topps Clearly Authentic Baseball. There were four beautiful acetate auto cards pulled including Diamondbacks rookie Seth Beer and White Sox youngster Andrew Vaughn. To win these cards, make sure you comment on the YouTube video who you think will win this year’s World Series and who will win MVP of said series. 
• For more information on everything Dave & Adam’s Card World related, visit dacardworld.com or visit all the social media platforms here.