CardAxis
Year 1 (2025-26)
by Whitney Griffin
CardAxis delivers instant, Machine-Learning powered grading insights, bringing accuracy and transparency to the trading card market.
About This Idea
We’re building CardAxis, a machine learning–powered pre-grading platform that brings speed, transparency, and precision to the trading card market. Our system provides instant, data-driven grading insights before collectors submit cards for professional grading.
Today, collectors face costly uncertainty. On average, many experience a two-point grading swing, believing a card will receive a 10, only to receive an 8. That difference can dramatically impact resale value and overall return on investment. Without reliable pre-grading insight, collectors are often gambling on submission fees, time, and potential loss in value.
This problem affects a massive and growing market. Over 41 million Americans collect trading cards, contributing to a $13 billion global industry. In 2025 alone, more than 19 million cards were submitted to PSA (the world's most popular professional grading company), representing a 26% increase from 2024. As submission volume grows, so does the financial risk associated with inaccurate expectations.
CardAxis eliminates that guesswork. By using machine learning trained on historical card data and continuously improving through logged professional grading results, our platform delivers increasingly precise and consistent grading predictions. Retailers gain a new in-store revenue stream, and collectors gain confidence before making submission decisions.
CardAxis is not replacing professional grading, it is strengthening the step before it, creating a smarter, more efficient, and more transparent grading ecosystem.
Where Did This Idea Spark at WMU?
CardAxis originated in an engineering course at Western Michigan University. We initially began with a different concept, but after evaluating feasibility and market need, we pivoted. Through an intensive brainstorming and ideation process, we analyzed real-world inefficiencies and identified a major gap in the trading card grading market, specifically the uncertainty collectors face before submission. That discovery ultimately led us to develop and refine the idea for CardAxis.
Impact in Kalamazoo
If CardAxis succeeds in Kalamazoo, the impact starts locally and scales nationally. Local retail card shops win through increased foot traffic, new pre-grading revenue streams, and stronger collector retention. With over 7,600 collectible retailers and resellers operating in the United States, the market is already thriving—and CardAxis provides tools to help these businesses grow even further by adding a high-demand, tech-enabled service.
Michigan’s collector community benefits from more confident, data-driven grading decisions that reduce wasted submission costs and improve investment outcomes. Increased engagement strengthens local card events, trade nights, and surrounding small businesses that benefit from hobby-driven traffic.
By launching in Kalamazoo, we establish the city as a proving ground for scalable retail innovation, positioning it at the forefront of a growing industry while contributing to greater transparency and efficiency across the global trading card market.
How Investment Helps
This investment allows us to move from concept to active deployment in Kalamazoo. It enables us to finalize hardware and software development, complete our initial production run, and place CardAxis units directly into local retail card shops. With funding, we can secure early partnerships, install demo units, and provide hands-on onboarding and technical support to ensure successful adoption.
Without investment, we remain in the prototype and validation phase. With investment, we establish real market presence, real users, and real revenue within the Kalamazoo community.
Our first local milestone is launching CardAxis in multiple Kalamazoo-area card shops and onboarding our first group of active retailers and collectors. This positions Kalamazoo as our pilot market and proof-of-concept hub, generating measurable traction before expanding across Michigan and nationally.
What I'll Do With the Money
Product Finalization & ML Optimization – 30% – Refine hardware performance, strengthen grading accuracy, and expand our machine learning dataset for reliable, consistent results.
Software & Cloud Infrastructure – 30% – Complete backend development, support cloud hosting and data storage, and ensure secure, scalable ML deployment.
Initial Manufacturing Run – 20% – Produce our first pilot-ready units for deployment in Kalamazoo retail shops.
Retail Launch & Market Entry – 20% – Fund demo units, retailer onboarding, local partnerships, and initial trade show presence to drive early adoption.
About the Founder
We are CardAxis, a team of Western Michigan University students with backgrounds in industrial engineering and industrial design, building solutions at the intersection of technology and real-world markets. We identified costly uncertainty in the trading card grading process and recognized that we could eliminate the guesswork. As the market continues to grow, now is the time to bring speed, transparency, and data-driven accuracy to grading.