New York (AFP)

A Basquiat, Yeezy or Ferrari within reach of all budgets, this is the promise of the increasingly numerous fractional ownership platforms which sell stakes in these rare objects, starting at a few dollars.

Transforming a table at 6 million dollars into 284,420 shares at 20 dollars each: this is the operation carried out on paper by the Masterworks platform, with "The Mosque", by Jean-Michel Basquiat, in spring 2020 .

Under these conditions, there is no question of hanging the canvas at home, parking a Lamborghini in your garage or storing these six bottles of Romanée-Conti in the wine cellar.

But with a piece of property, equivalent to the shares of a listed company, anyone can now benefit directly from a rise in the value of such property, like a wealthy collector.

Whether it's tables or baseball cards, "it's not a new industry," argues Ezra Levine, CEO of Collectable, a platform specializing in collectible sports objects.

“It's not like cryptocurrencies, invented ten years ago,” he says.

"It's only the ways people have to participate (in this market) that have changed dramatically," he says.

- Pokémon cards -

Slugger, the nickname of a collector who preferred to remain anonymous, made a profit of 500% on a few shares of a box of Pokémon cards, the initial price of which was $ 125,000.

The Rally platform had offered it via an IPO, similar to the marketing of any company and subject to the control of the US market regulator, the SEC.

"These platforms have opened up this category of assets to people who cannot afford a (collection of Michael) Jordan card", sums up John Schuck, whose holdings reach around $ 20,000 in cars, paintings or sports objects.

The concept of shared ownership of physical assets is not new and started with real estate.

For twenty years, it had widened to private jets and other yachts, but with still high entry prices, inaccessible to the general public.

The new platforms have drastically lowered them, to less than ten dollars a share.

Such entry prices allow, for example, access to collector's sneakers, of which the “sneakers” culture has made cult objects, explains Gerome Sapp.

Its platform, Rares, will put up for sale, in mid-June, shares of the pair of Nike Air Yeezy 1 inspired by Kanye West, which it acquired $ 1.8 million at the end of April, a record.

- "A pure investment" -

But the emotional dimension is no longer the same, because most shareholders will never see the object in person, unlike old-fashioned collectors.

Rally has opened a museum in New York, which presents some of the pieces listed on the platform, and Masterworks a gallery, but few plan to go there.

“The fact that I can't touch them takes away all emotion,” says Gregg Love, who belongs to this generation of new kind of collectors.

"I don't feel any connection with any of these objects," confirms Slugger.

"For me, it is pure investment and entertainment."

Seen as a pioneer of this new trend of fractional ownership, Rally has seen a major acceleration with the pandemic, and topped 200,000 users, with approximately $ 25 million in assets listed on the platform.

Behind Rally, three competing platforms - Otis, Collectable and Masterworks, more art-oriented - together have more than 200,000 users.

Many of them are however active on several platforms at the same time.

During the pandemic, teleworking, containment and reduced leisure time offered time and savings for many Americans, especially young professionals, who turned to the stock market or new investments.

“A lot of people had money in their account and were looking for a place to put it (...) we have been spoiled with the returns on some investments for the past year,” says John Schuck.

With the gradual exit from the health crisis, he now observes "a slowdown" in the market, he said.

Others also evoke the effect of a perhaps too rapid increase in supply.

- Sudden fluctuations -

Even if the price of many objects remains higher, sometimes significantly, than their initial value, some people are sometimes worried about sudden price fluctuations, much more marked than on the stock market.

Fractional ownership is still an experimental market, where the risks are very real in terms of valuation.

Slugger cites "panic sales" from recent investors, when "nothing has fundamentally changed for most of these assets."

For Ezra Levine, in the long term, the platforms nevertheless offer "a much more optimal valuation method" than before.

They have increased transparency and democratized access, so that "a lot of people can influence prices, not just a small group".

© 2021 AFP