Mickey Mantle’s childhood home could be the next big IPO

Rally allows investors to buy stakes in collectibles including vintage cars, rare comic books and even a giant triceratops skull. Rally manages assets, like the dinosaur skull and Mantle’s home, and sells shares of them to people who are interested in ownership through an “initial offering” and likely couldn’t afford to buy the items outright.

And who wouldn’t want to invest in the legacy of baseball legend Mickey Mantle?

“One of the most collectible names in all of sports and really all of collecting is Mickey Mantle,” Rally founder Rob Petrozzo told MarketWatch ahead of the offering. “This particular home in this area of Oklahoma, they are poised for growth. For us and our user base, this is exactly what we look for. We want it to be a bit unique, a little quirky.”

Here’s how it works: Rally researches and acquires a collectible, then sets the price and issues shares to investors who can purchase and monitor their assets online.

How money can be made

There are basically two ways an investor who has shares of an asset on the platform can make money. The first is if the asset is sold at a greater valuation than the price at which it was purchased. The Mantle home has a valuation of $329,000, and, if Rally sells the home at a price tag of $470,000 for example, the value of each share would proportionally increase to $10 from $7, a $3 profit per share. Users can buy multiple shares.

In order for Rally to sell the home, shareholders would need to vote to do so — a voting process that is executed within the Rally platform.

The second way to profit is to sell shares through Rally’s bid/ask trading function, which can be done within the app after roughly 90 days of ownership. Users can sell their equity to other users on Rally’s digital marketplace.

Owning shares of a collectible can be intriguing to some investors because it lowers the barrier to entry and increases accessibility.

“We allow our clients to own fractional shares of ETFs, but this is taking the idea of fractional ownership to a whole new level,” Nick Holeman, director of financial planning at Betterment, told MarketWatch. “It democratizes access to rare collectibles, which is a plus. This allows investors to get into the game in smaller amounts, which can make staying diversified easier as well.”

Fractionalizing equity in a real-estate property is one thing, but doing so at the place where Mantle lived while learning the game in which he became one of the most enduring legends is another. Mantle’s is one of the most sought-after names in collectibles, right up there with Michael Jordan and Honus Wagner. A 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle rookie card with a 9.5 grade sold for $12.6 million last year, the highest price ever for a card.

The 672-square-foot home, comprising two bedrooms and a single bathroom, was purchased by Rally for $175,000 in 2022.

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For investors in the property, it’s not a simple real-estate investment in which the main hope is the emergence down the road of a buyer with a high offer. There are ways to monetize this property.

“Turning the house into a museum, turning the grounds into a place you could visit, making it an attraction off Route 66 — it can also be merchandised,” Petrozzo said. “Monetizing partnerships with the MLB, small things like putting a vending machine on the grounds for visitors, and potentially doing an Airbnb
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While Rally is the manager of the property, monetizing opportunities listed above, as well as other major changes to the property, could only be enacted if shareholders vote in favor of them, the company said.

Any money generated through such opportunities would be distributed to shareholders in the form of dividends, the company says, and any maintenance or property taxes from the home would be assumed by Rally.

In addition to voting on changes to the property, shareholders can submit idea proposals for the Mantle home, which would then be voted on by fellow owners.

Even though it’s been many years since the deceased ballplayer — known as the Mick and, in a nod to his hometown, the Commerce Comet — lived in that Oklahoma home, there remain signs of his time there.

“The home and the barn attached to it still have the ball marks from him taking cuts and learning how to swing,” Petrozzo said.

Words of caution

Wondering whether you should look into adding collectibles or alternative forms of investments into your portfolio?

“I would caution investors to not hold more than 5% of their portfolio in rare collectibles like this,” Betterment’s Holeman said. And be sure to consult a financial adviser before making any big investment decision.

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