Move Over Pokémon—Here Come the VC Trading Cards

You’ve heard of trading cards featuring baseball legends, comic book superheroes, and maybe even K-pop idols. But what if we told you there’s a set of collectible cards starring… *venture capitalists*?

No, you’re not hallucinating from too much coffee.

A startup called Allocations—which builds tools for private market investing—decided the finance world needed a little more flair. Their solution? Glossy, professionally designed VC trading cards that spotlight Silicon Valley’s top dealmakers like the stars they think they are.

Each card features a photo of the investor, their portfolio highlights, and quirky factoids. Some even have stats like how many unicorns they’ve backed, or their average Series A valuation. It’s basically Top Trumps meets TechCrunch.

The idea started as a tongue-incheek holiday gift for clients. But the cards went viral in VC circles, prompting actual trading, hoarding, and a few intense office showdowns over who got the Marc Andreessen or the Aileen Lee card.

It’s part parody, part love letter to the ecosystem of startup funding, and a weirdly genius bit of branding.

According to Allocations’ founder, the goal was to “make finance a little more fun.” Mission absolutely accomplished.

Now if only someone would make a holographic limited-edition “Unicorn Whisperer” card…

Stoned! Book Lovers Could Care Less

Book lovers have always held on to their precious book marks, marking pages after pages in between their compulsive habit of reading. But from paper to ribbon to fabric, felt, wood, and even precious metals, bookmarks have eventually raced on to marble, giving book nerds an elevated sense to their reading ex- perience, by literally mounting their favourite book onto a bookmark! Sounds quirky?

British designer Paul Cockridge’s The Bookmark is everything a bookmark is not supposed to be: heavy to lift, difficult to carry, and bigger than the book itself. The work alters the power balance between page keeper and book, tethering it to its place.

Dutch stone supplier SolidNature gives the varied aqua coloured stone with gold, tan, and brown veining using Laguna Quartzite, and the black with intensive goldish colouration veins of Aurea Vesperati that makes the simple geometry of a wedge-shaped bookstand, with its large flat planes, becoming the perfect uninterrupted canvas to show off this intricately veined material to its full effect.

Cocksedge’s hand-selected blocks of stone are being used for the small and large versions of The Bookmark, processed at SolidNature’s workshop in Amsterdam, using CNC carving to cut and shape with precision and hand polish for finish.

Another masterpiece is the White Marble bookmark limited edition, each of which comes certified, numbered, and signed by Cocksedge himself, which tethered to a lamp can create long or wide shapes, and be adapted to fit into various interior spaces.

“The Bookmark radically changes the book as an object, making it an active part of the surrounding space, almost an object of veneration on its rocking altar,” says Cocksedge. Do book lovers care less!

The Bookmark radically changes the book as an object, making it an active part of the surrounding space, almost an object of veneration on its rocking altar