Ripmart Brings Live Shopping With Instant Buybacks to New York Comic Con

Ripmart, the live-shopping app built on Collector Crypt, had one of the biggest booths on the Javits Center floor at New York Comic Con from Oct. 8 to 11. All weekend, it handed out graded cards and sealed Pokémon to collectors who joined its waitlist, while CEO Chris Akhavan went on Collector Crypt's livestream from the booth to share more information about Ripmart's impending launch.1

What Ripmart is

Akhavan's pitch is Whatnot with a cash register built in. "Imagine what you love about apps like Whatnot, live shopping, highly engaging, but powered by the technology of Collector Crypt," he said on the stream. When a buyer hits a card on a Ripmart break, "in that exact moment, that card is being tokenized," so the buyer can take "a buyback offer on the spot," keep the card in Collector Crypt's vault or list it on the marketplace.1

That's the part I'd watch. Today, selling a pull means shipping it, grading it or listing it and waiting, but Ripmart wants to turn the same hit into money for the next break while the stream is still live. Collector Crypt already sells graded cards that sit in its own vault as tokens, which is the plumbing Ripmart plugs into.2

Tuom Holmberg of Collector Crypt introduced Akhavan on the stream as Ripmart's CEO and said he was previously Chief Business Officer at Magic Eden, where Collector Crypt ran its first mint. For Collector Crypt, Ripmart is a way past its crypto crowd. "We've been trying to continue to build the Collector Crypt roadmap and try to penetrate into non-crypto audiences," Holmberg said. "That's a big part of our future growth."1

Golden tickets, four-figure slabs and a briefcase of cash

The booth ran on sign-ups. Visitors entered their details on one of six iPads for a shot at a golden ticket, got a second shot when they confirmed their email, and took the ticket up to the stage to press a button and spin for a rare, epic or legendary prize. At NYCC, participants were winning all day, from the Pokémon 30th Celebration poster collection to legendary drops that held graded slabs led by a PSA 8 Southern Islands Mew. Campbell said every legendary drop card was worth four figures.1

A winner named Leo landed a rare after the wheel nearly stopped on legendary, in a spin Ripmart filmed at the booth.4

The team brought 16 legendary slabs and gave out four per day from a weekend prize pool that Akhavan said would come out to "over 40 grand."1

Host Dakota Campbell acted out Ripmart's buyback pitch in person, carrying what he called a briefcase full of cash and trying to buy prizes back from winners on the spot. A winner named Chris turned down offers of 100, then 140, then 160 dollars for the Elite Trainer Box he won, while a winner named Lucas passed on 60 dollars for his poster collection because he wanted to open it himself.1

Who sells on day one

Akhavan said the booth doubled as a recruiting floor for sellers who already do big volume on Whatnot and eBay, with faster cash as the hook. "If you're a merchant, you're selling stuff to an audience. The fact that that money can immediately come back into the system to buy the next thing you put on an auction is huge," he said.1

Campbell said 60 of "the best live streamers" will sell on Ripmart from the first day, with inventory sourced from Merry-Go-Round and the tokenization handled by Collector Crypt. He put that lineup in YouTube terms.1

If you were to launch a product like YouTube today, you'd want to have MrBeast on your platform. And we kind of have the MrBeast of live shopping for cards.1

Akhavan said having Collector Crypt's technology and "a network of streamers that know how to sell this product live" from the start is what sets Ripmart apart. "That combination is truly unique," he said.1

When it launches

Ripmart is running a waitlist until the app launches later this year or early next. It had about 21,000 sign-ups when CardWire checked on Oct. 12.3 The team said the New York sign-ups passed the app's total from all of San Diego Comic-Con within a day. Akhavan said launch is "a matter of months, not half a year, not a year."1

In his final thoughts on the stream, Holmberg went bigger. "It's going to be a big quarter," he said. "Big stuff happening. And we're just one step at a time going to take over the space."1

Notes

1. Collector Crypt, "Back in the Grass, Episode 73, LIVE in NYC at Comic Con," livestream on X, Oct. 9, 2026. Akhavan on what Ripmart is at 6:42 to 7:48 and on merchants and launch timing at 16:32 to 18:12; Holmberg on Akhavan at 8:05 to 9:50; the booth mechanics, the prize tiers and the legendary case at 41:01 to 42:20 and 31:44 to 32:52; the prize estimate at 6:05 to 6:13; the buyback offers at 29:56 to 30:42 and 44:00 to 44:38; Holmberg on non-crypto audiences at 8:06 to 8:18; the final thoughts from Holmberg, Akhavan and Campbell at 52:15 to 54:45, including the day-one streamers and Merry-Go-Round. CardWire transcribed the stream. ↩
2. Blockworks, "Play your CARDS right," The Breakdown, Sept. 21, 2026, on Collector Crypt's vault and tokenized cards. ↩
3. ripmart.com, read Oct. 12, 2026. ↩
4. Ripmart, video of a prize-wheel spin at its New York Comic Con booth, Oct. 2026, shared with CardWire. ↩