Four UC Berkeley graduates have created a startup where individuals can invest in collectible trading cards. The startup, named Tash, buys different trading cards and allows users to buy and sell shares of the cards such as stocks or other securities. The company raised a pre-seed round of $500,000 through Y Combinator, a startup accelerator. Because the company sells shares in securities, it has yet to gain approval from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. On Y Combinator’s website, the startup describes itself as the “BlackRock of collectibles.” The company was part of the accelerator’s summer 2026 batch. Tash will buy and store the physical cards, then split the baskets into shares. It will sell these shares to buyers and then run a secondary marketplace for investors to trade with one another, using marketable items such as other investment products. Tash will collect a fee from this secondary market and from personal accounts themselves. Read more through the...