Katy area Texas A&M student Zachary Lynch and his cofounders Michael Goeden and Joseph Escobar launched Card Stock Exchange through Texas A&M’s McFerrin School of Entrepreneurship last year. Over the summer, they formally launched their website which allows collectible sports card enthusiasts to monitor the values of their collections and as a research tool for investors in sports memorabilia, Lynch said.

Lynch said the idea for the company came from his own love of collecting trading cards and his work as a masters student studying finance at Texas A&M.

“I was thinking of it from a stock perspective,” Lynch said. “How can you buy a stock without the information we want to know about buying a stock and find the ticker?”

Lynch’s answer was to standardize card descriptions and establish a database that records and tracks values for people that use Card Stock Exchange’s services. He partnered with Goeden and Escobar who were both card fans, and the company moved forward from there.

Lynch’s love of cards stems from a trip to Books-A-Million at Katy Mills when he was 10, Lynch said. His grandfather had taken him into the bookstore on an outing together and he’d found some cards there. Later he found other area stores that stoked his passion for memorabilia – especially collectible cards – and he was hooked on the hobby, he said.

“I opened up that first pack there with my grandpa and that’s what got the creative edge going,” Lynch said.

A dozen years later, Lynch and his partners have been recognized for their work in setting up Card Stock Exchange as a business. In March of 2019, the company competed in and won the undergraduate division of the Rice University Napier Launch Pitch Competition. In November of last year, they placed in the top six of the Blackstone LaunchPad Pitch Competition. In June of 2020, Lynch said the group was able to hire WDI Coding to help them establish their website which launched over the summer and their mobile app which is still in development and expected to be released in the next few months.

Other upcoming innovations include partnering directly with athletes that have shown interest to help them release their merchandise exclusively through Card Stock Exchange. This option will allow athletes to sell items directly to their fans such as exclusive shoes, clothing and trading cards, he said.

“The big thing is going to be partnerships with the athletes,” Lynch said. “Each (sports organization) that we partner with will direct their athletes towards us.”

The main thing though, Lynch said, is to connect with other collectors that have a passion for investing in sports cards – and potentially other cards and collectibles in the future. He and his team want people to understand that each card is unique with its own story and can be a true investment, not just as a collector but as a financial investment and the tools at cardstockexchange.com can help them manage those investments.

“I really want people to come to our platform and see it as truly an investment platform,” Lynch said.