Collectible Platform Rally Speeds Into New Asset Categories With $30M Series B

If you’d like to procure a share of a copy of the Declaration of Independence in a more legal way than Nicolas Cage’s character in “National Treasure,” then Rally can hook you up.

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The New York-based company raised $30 million in Series B funding to scale its platform and mobile app giving retail investors access to collectibles.

Accel led the funding round and was joined by existing investors, including Upfront Ventures and Social Leverage. In addition, Rally secured a $50 million debt facility from Upper90 Capital to enable the company to provide one-of-a-kind assets across all categories. The new funding brings the company’s total equity funding to approximately $50 million, according to company CEO George Leimer.

Founded in 2017, the company started out with collectible cars and has grown into offering more than 300 assets across categories including sports memorabilia, natural history artifacts — yes, like dinosaurs — fashion, musical instruments and rare books, Leimer said. Platform users can own a piece of these rare and unique collectibles for as low as $1 per share.

This new funding will let Rally expand into new categories, including cash-flow producing assets such as intellectual property, art, real estate and NFTs. Leimer also expects to bring on more employees, as well as invest in technology and product development, as well as its regulatory and compliance model in order to provide new ways of trading assets.

“Our biggest focus is entering new asset classes,” he told Crunchbase News. “We’ve taken the conscious strategy that if we grow the number and diversity of the assets on our platform, the users will come.”

Indeed, the company increased its assets under management 4x in the last six months, now up to $30 million, and Leimer expects that to be $75 million by the end of 2021. In the past year, Rally’s categories grew from five to 15, while new investors participating increased by 575 percent in the same period of time.

Rally also plans to resume its in-person experiences by re-opening its New York flagship museum as well as up to 10 additional locations and retail experiences in major U.S. cities.

“The collectibles space, regardless of business model, is gigantic and has a lot of heat and light on it right now,” Leimer added. “As long as the asset is interesting and rare, people will have a passion for it.”

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias