This new was published in the New York Times on March 20, 2021.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/20/style/spending-rich-people.html?searchResultPosition=7

Those unprepared to shell out high sums for vintage collectibles are getting in on the action through recently established mutual funds.

Rally, an Android and iPhone app that sells fractional shares in everything from Rolex GMTs to dinosaur remains, had 100,000 users at the start of the pandemic and oversaw $12 million in inventory. Rob Petrozzo, its chief product officer and co-founder, said in an interview that the company now oversees $30 million of merchandise and has over 200,000 users. According to the company, the average age of a user is 28, and most are male.

The way the app works, investors buy, sell or trade their shares as if they were stocks. New product launches are actually called I.P.O.s.

“The equities space and the cryptocurrency space over the last couple years created really savvy investors who understand the dynamics of the market, so it’s a complement to their Coinbase accounts and their Robinhood accounts,” Mr. Petrozzo said.

One of Mr. Petrozzo’s “investors” is Nicholas Abouzeid, the 24-year-old head of marketing at MainStreet, a 50-person firm that helps start-ups find and claim tax credits and incentives from the government.

On a recent afternoon, Mr. Abouzeid was talking over Zoom from the bedroom of his home in Woodbury, Conn. In his long-sleeved white T-shirt and wood framed glasses, he looked like any number of young white men who might work for Mark Zuckerberg or Josh Kushner. Behind him were shelves of memorabilia — super plastic toys, sealed Nintendo games from the ’90s and collectible Nike Sacai Waffle sneakers.

In the actual stock market, Mr. Abouzeid made last year what he described as “more than what somebody should make in a year,” buying and selling positions in high-growth technology companies such as Slack, Stitch Fix, Shopify and Fastly. “I’m in and out all the time,” he said.

He extracted much of his profits and put them into Pokémon collectibles.

On one level, it’s born of his nostalgia for the game, which he began playing in sixth grade. On another, it’s “an alternative asset class and a way to diversify,” as he put it.

His holy grail item is a first-edition “Booster Box” of Pokemon cards.

Upon its 1999 release, the set cost $110. In January, Heritage Auctions in Dallas sold one for $408,000.

Mr. Abouzeid doesn’t have that kind of money, but in a June 2020 “I.P.O.” from Rally, he purchased 125 “shares” of one at a price of $25 each.

They’re now worth $120 each, giving him a profit of around $13,500 (which is at least 300 percent more than he earned from his Slack holdings).

Jackson Moses, a colleague of Mr. Abouzeid’s at MainStreet, invests in biotech stocks and vintage whiskey But Johnson & Johnson and Jack Daniel’s don’t interest him.

His Merrill Lynch account contains shares of companies like Sarepta Therapeutics, a maker of precision genetic medicines that treat rare neuromuscular and central nervous system diseases. His fridge is filled with rare, vintage Kacho Fugetsu.

“When my parents saw them in my apartment, they got really worried,” he said. “They said, ‘Is there something we need to talk about?’ But I don’t even open them.”

Earlier this month, when rising interest rates sent high-flying tech stocks into a tailspin, Kacho Fugetsu provided what Mr. Moses called “the perfect hedge.”

Of course, he’s aware that the ascent of his whiskey collection also could come to an end, but that at least has an upside. “Then I’ll finally have an excuse to drink it,” he said.