🚗 Airbnb, but for cars

Today, tens of thousands of total dorks, weenies, and geeks will gather just outside of Chicago to browse 600k+ square feet of collectibles, trading cards, and assorted sports and entertainment memorabilia.

And though the National Sports Collectors Convention, AKA “The National,” is generally a joyous occasion, it isn’t entirely a happy one — after all, there are a lot of lonely moms with quiet, empty basements out there this weekend.

We kid, we kid (but also, are we wrong?).

This industry, though, is no joke

When billion-dollar companies invest in an event, it’s a good bet there are many more billions at stake, and, well, the big brands are inescapable at this year’s edition of The National:

• $62B behemoth Fanatics is using the event to kick-start its new livestream commerce app.
• Whatnot, the $3.7B company behind the US’s largest livestream shopping platform, is rolling out a big giveaway — Michael Jordan’s old 1996 Mercedes-Benz for just $23.
• $23.75B memorabilia marketplace eBay has a booth accepting free drop-offs for its Vault program, which caters to the collectibles crowd.

BTW: That’s an actual vault, climate-controlled with 24/7 surveillance, biometric authentication systems, and background-checked security staff — all to keep your Albert Einstein “rookie card” safe.

Outside the convention…

… the collectibles business is packed with other intriguing stories:

• How about a Magic: The Gathering trading card drawing $2m+ offers? The one-of-a-kind card, which depicts the “One Ring” of Lord of the Rings fame, isn’t even the Magic card known as the “Mona Lisa of collecting cards.”
• There’s the former NFL player who retired to sell Pokemon cards full time — and who says he made $11.5m+ in a year doing so.

Trading cards remain so hot (in the next decade, the global sports memorabilia market alone is estimated to reach — yeesh — $227.2B) that Disney’s even making its first foray into them.

Sure, disrupting Enterprise and its 1.7m-strong fleet of rental cars will be hard. But if the 117m+ American households that own at least one car all join forces…

Well, you get the idea.

That’s the thesis behind Turo, the “Airbnb for cars,” which, according to The Wall Street Journal, is now being used by some entrepreneurs to operate their own little rental enterprises.

On Turo, ~15% of hosts list three or more vehicles. On Getaround, a competitor, ~70% of cars are owned by “power hosts.” (One host offers 1k cars, which just seems mildly stressful.)

For rent: Just about everything

Turo is part of a growing list of companies Airbnb-ifying cars in more ways than one, including through:

• The roof: Firefly, which has raised $53m, sells and operates digital car-top advertising units for taxis and ride-share vehicles. Both Uber and Lyft also offer this directly.
• The parking: SpotHero has sold $1B+ in parking reservations, and the younger AirGarage has raised $14.8m for its full-service parking management platform.
• The center console: Cargo raised $40m for its “snack boxes for Uber passengers” business — though it reportedly pivoted to car-top ads in 2020.
• The headrest: Octopus, which T-Mobile acquired last year, offers touch screens to display ride info and entertainment to Uber and Lyft passengers.

It ain’t just cars, either. As of last year, 6m+ people had used campsite-finder Hipcamp (basically Airbnb for people who are OK with bugs). Swimply, which started out as a pool marketplace, has expanded to yards, pickleball, tennis, and basketball courts.

Another company, Boatsetter, offers access to 50k boats and has helped 500k+ first-time boaters go boating since 2012. Also, we just said “boat” four times in one sentence, and will not be saying it again for at least a month.