- Shark Tank star and multimillionaire investor Kevin O’Leary said collectibles could be an up-and-coming alternative market. The popularity of Labubu toys, one of which O’Leary owns, has shown the power of collectibles and has helped skyrocket the stock of their Chinese creator, Pop Mart. O’Leary pointed to sports cards as the next big thing, with between $380 million and $400 million worth trading monthly.
Kevin O’Leary has his eyes on a new alternative market: collectibles.
Parading a Louis Vuitton Labubu he acquired on the set of Shark Tank, the investor told CNBC the collectibles asset class may have some staying power.
“It’s not flash in the pan,” O’Leary said.
The Labubu O’Leary showed off—which he insisted he is not selling despite multiple offers—is the most recent “It toy” created by Chinese company Pop Mart. The fuzzy plush toy with pointed ears and a mischievous, toothy grin generally comes in a “blind box,” meaning buyers don’t know which they will receive until they buy. The toys have become a worldwide craze, with a boost from celebrity promotion, helping push Pop Mart’s net profit up 400% for the first half of the year. The company’s Hong Kong–listed shares have skyrocketed 246% year to date.
On the online reseller StockX, Pop Mart has maintained the top spot for collectible brands since October 2024, thanks to the strength of Labubus, according to the company’s midyear data report. The toy still hasn’t hit its peak yet, though, with StockX reporting more than twice as many sales in June than it saw in January, along with 2.4 million searches for the word “Labubu” in the first half of the year, putting it in the top 10 search terms, according to the report. Some of the toys, which retail for about $40, have sold for about $4,000 on StockX.
Apart from Labubus, O’Leary also mentioned collectible sports cards could possibly be the next big alternative investment. After studying the past eight years of the market, O’Leary found that between $380 million and $400 million worth of the cards are trading monthly.
“These are baseball cards, or F1 cards, or basketball cards; they’re trading for a million, $2 million, $3 million, $4 million, and it reminds me so much of what was happening in modern art and contemporary art 20 years ago,” he said.
O’Leary noted that while fathers and sons have been collecting sports cards for 50 years in the U.S., someone’s dusty baseball card collection could now be a prized set of collectibles potentially worth millions.
“That market really intrigues me,” said O’Leary. “It sort of captures what this Labubu vibe is all about, except you can see—there’s a platform called Card Ladder—you’re going to find cards on there for millions of dollars that are appreciating, in some cases, better than the S&P 500.”
On Card Ladder’s account on X, a post from Friday touted a 2013 “Innovation Kobe Bryant Kaboom!” sports card that sold for $4,560 a year ago. On Aug. 10, the card sold for a whopping $19,999—up 338%.