🗞️ Inside Info

Shiny Thing$ #235: News from around the market

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There was a LOT of great collectible and alt-investment content floating around this week, so this edition of Shiny Thing$ is a visual walkthrough of the most important (and most interesting) news, sales, rumors, and content of the week, from friends and extended network here at Rally…

The AP Swatch 

First up: the (very) polarizing rumored collaboration between Audemars Piguet and Swatch. On one side, a brand with a $20,000+ entry point built around exclusivity and wealth signaling. On the other, a mass-market watchmaker whose pieces often start under $30. While both brands have deep history and passionate followings, the overlap between those audiences is far from identical, and the internet has spent the week debating what this could mean for AP’s aura and long-term positioning. 

Fueling most of the discourse was a conceptual render circulating across Twitter earlier this week: a Royal Oak-style Swatch that, if released, would likely retail for under $500 while looking VERY similar to the ceramic AP Royal Oak models currently trading north of $250K on the secondary market.

The story, from Ashwinn Krishnaswamy (@shwinnabegobrand) 👇

GME > EBAY

The in the collectibles-marketplace world this past week: GameStop made an unsolicited $56 billion offer to acquire eBay. The offer immediately sparked debate across finance and internet/wallstreetbets culture, largely because eBay’s market value currently sits at roughly four times that of GameStop’s. That imbalance quickly turned the story into a spectacle surrounding GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen, who has never exactly been reserved with public commentary. Following a particularly chaotic CNBC appearance (which instantly turned “half cash / half stock” into a meme) Cohen later appeared on TBPN to walk through how the deal would/could theoretically work.

The story, from TBPN (@TBPN) 👇

Adidas is Winning

Onto a (quiet) fight with the big culture brands: A few weeks ago, the “Nike is losing the culture” narrative resurfaced after the once-mythical two-hour marathon barrier was broken by two runners wearing Adidas - a moment that, years ago, would have felt almost impossible outside of Nike’s orbit. Nike once owned this corner of culture completely and was the absolute BEST at telling the aspirational story before/during/after. It’s what they built their brand on… 

But with the World Cup arriving in the U.S. in just a few months, Adidas reclaimed the spotlight again this week with the release of its “Backyard Legends” campaign film. Featuring cameos from Timothée Chalamet and Bad Bunny alongside iconic moments from the biggest names in soccer, the campaign is already being discussed as one of the strongest brand films in recent memory, and another sign that Nike’s long-running dominance is no longer untouchable.

The story, from Off Ball (@offball) 👇

More to come, next week…