Courtyard.io’s Big Shift
On-chain proxies suggest Courtyard is driven by a “buy packs -> sell back -> spin again” loop - until Nov 11, when physical redemptions surged and the platform started behaving like a real fulfillment engine.
Key Idea
The money is mostly recycled. A big chunk of what flows in quickly flows back out via buybacks, so the “revenue-looking” numbers are boosted by repeat spinning.
Courtyard.io is like an online store for collectible cards, but with a twist: instead of picking a specific card, many people buy mystery packs. You open the pack digitally, see what you got, and then you can either keep it, trade it, or ask for the real physical card to be shipped to you.
What stood out in the data is that Courtyard behaves less like a normal “marketplace” (where people mostly trade with each other) and more like a fast loop: buy a pack -> open it -> if you don’t like the card, you can sell it back immediately for credits -> then buy another pack. That can make the platform look extremely busy and high-revenue, but a lot of that activity is the same money getting reused again and again.
In November 2025, about $28.6M flowed into the system, and about $21.9M flowed back out to users through “sell back” payments. In plain terms: a big chunk of spending wasn’t people bringing in brand-new cash each time - it was people recycling value to keep playing.
The biggest change happened around Nov 11. Before then, only about 30-ish people per day were doing the “ship me the real card” option. After Nov 11, it jumped to 1,000+ shipments per day, and it stayed high. That strongly suggests a shift from “digital trading for fun” to “I want this delivered in time for the holidays.”
Also, even though Courtyard is branded like a marketplace, actual person-to-person trading seems small - only around 1–2% of total activity. Most users aren’t there to negotiate trades; they’re there to open packs.
The main thing to watch is execution. Shipping 1,000+ orders a day is hard, and delays are the fastest way for trust to break in collectibles. And one more caveat: these numbers come from blockchain activity, so they don’t show big real-world costs like buying the cards in the first place, shipping fees, chargebacks, or customer support.
When you mix a fun, fast digital loop with a real-world product, growth stops being a marketing problem and becomes an operations problem.
Courtyard can drive huge activity with pack-opening and instant sell-backs, but the moment users start redeeming at scale, trust depends on boring fundamentals - inventory, shipping speed, and customer support. In the real world, execution is the product.