/// Heres whats coming

Every so often here at Rally, we’re presented with an opportunity comes along that feels larger than the asset itself. This fall, Rally is preparing to open the doors on one of the most ambitious offerings in our history: the Barosaurus IPO - the still-active excavation of one of the largest dinosaurs ever found. At nearly 100 feet in length and with a market cap set at $12.5M, this skeleton represents more than just another addition to the fossil record - it’s a once-in-a-generation chance to participate in the story of deep time, in real time. 

This fossil is certainly newsletter-worthy, so we’re giving you some of the most interesting pieces of the story in this, the 202nd edition, of Shiny Thing$.

PS- if you want the full prospectus deck, reply to this email with “MEMO”

When Giants Walked the Earth…

In the fall of 2020, deep within the Morrison Formation in Wyoming, a discovery was made that would redefine what was thought possible in the world of private fossil collecting and scientific preservation. A team of paleontologists uncovered the remains of a giant: a Barosaurus, the enormous long-necked Jurassic plant eater that stretched nearly 100 feet from nose to tail and weighed more than 20 tons in life.

Over the past four years, the process of carefully excavating, cataloguing, and preparing its bones has been ongoing, both on site in Wyoming, and at a purpose-built facility in Tucson Arizona. Already more than 75% complete, with projections of surpassing 90% as final recovery continues, this Barosaurus will stand apart as one of the largest and most complete dinosaurs ever brought to market. Few sauropods of this scale have ever emerged intact from the ground, let alone with such preservation and continuity across their skeleton.

The drivers of both value and scientific interest in this particular specimen are 4-fold: It’s rare, it ranks high in completeness for any dinosaur thats ever come to market, it has unicorn-status in terms of sheer scale, and lastly, the market has been extremely active as of late (a quick google search will yield the words “new record sale” over and over.

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01: Rarity

A Barosaurus has never traded publicly as a full skeleton based on all available records - only scattered bones have surfaced - making this offering a true first-of-its-kind within the market. Even within Diplodocidae, public sales are vanishingly rare: a Diplodocus (“Misty”) crossed the block in 2013, and an Apatosaurus (“Vulcain”) sold in Paris in 2024 with a marketing blitz that made it unavoidable (literally). That scarcity, combined with Barosaurus’s cultural profile (the rearing Barosaurus in the American Museum of Natural History’s rotunda is the museum’s marquee dinosaur), creates a supply-demand imbalance few fossils can match.

02: Completeness

This specimen is on track to finish ~90% complete. Thats an exceptional threshold that has correlated with outsized results at auction. Recent comps underscore the premium for highly complete mounts: the Stegosaurus “Apex,” ~80% complete, set the all-time fossil record at $44.6M (2024), while the only known juvenile Ceratosaurus with 139 original bone elements realized $30.5M via Sotheby’s (2025). “Stan” the T. rex, among the most complete of its kind, achieved $31.8M in 2020. Together, these benchmarks frame a clear market willingness to pay for completeness, condition, and exhibition-readiness.

03: Size

Only a handful of dinosaurs 40+ feet have ever sold publicly, with an average realized price of ~$11.8M for that size cohort. At a projected completed length of ~100 feet, this Barosaurus would be the longest dinosaur ever sold, eclipsing the current auction record for length for Vulcain the Apatosaurus at roughly 67–70 feet in 2024 - by a wide margin. Size amplifies presence, exhibition value, and earned media; fewer than a handful of collectors or institutions on earth have ever had access to something like this, but for those that have, its visibility and sheer scale are unmatched.

04: Timing

The category is in a clear up-cycle: the three most expensive dinosaur fossils ever -Apex (2024), the juvenile Ceratosaurus (2025), and Stan (2020) - all transacted in the last five years, reflecting deepening demand from high net worth collectors, family offices, and institutions. Rally’s dataset shows ~$193M in dinosaur-skeleton volume across 32 sales since 1997, with ~$159M of that volume occurring in just the last five years; the 3-year moving average climbed more than 1,200% from ~$2.4M (2018) to >$31.7M (2024) baased on that analysis. Meanwhile, museums continue to prime public interest - AMNH’s rotunda Barosaurus is one of New York’s most-seen dinosaurs—and marquee buyers like Ken Griffin have further normalized headline prices. This is a rare asset meeting a receptive market.

Dinosaurs continue to be more embedded in cultural consciousness with each passing day, and thats why we love them so much here at Rally. What we’ve seen in recent years as we’ve gone deeper into the category is that rom both a financial and a general interest perspective, the interest is now expanding beyond the usual suspects and the “coloring book” dinosaurs we all grew up on. 

This is where we find ourselves connected to the Barosaurus. 

That growing mainstream familiarity, paired with escalating demand from ultra-high-net-worth collectors and the normalization of eight-figure results, creates a market moment in which we feel this Barosaurus offering aligns with both cultural relevance and investment appetite.

Will it be the unicorn we believe it could be? TBD… but we’ll be dropping you more details and more origin stories of this dinosaur, and others over the next few weeks leading into the IPO.

Stay tuned.

Until Next Week...