Taking an object tied to the world of sports or Pokémon and applying it to contemporary art is exactly the idea behind the collectible cards launched by Contemporary100, the platform founded by Coby Katz, dedicated to a hundred international artists.

The mechanism is one we’ve all known since childhood, updated for an audience of art collectors. Each pack contains ten randomly selected cards, nine Base Cards and one guaranteed Foil Card, with the remote but real possibility of pulling an Artist-Signed Card, a one-of-a-kind piece hand-signed by the artist. Prices follow the logic of the collectibles market rather than the art market, starting at $49.99 for a single pack, rising to $129.99 for three, up to $399.99 for ten.

Among the hundred names involved in the launch set are Daniel Arsham, Felipe Pantone, Hebru Brantley, Vhils, Stickymonger, Josh Sperling, Tyrrell Winston, Joshua Vides, Gina Beavers, Ludovic Nkoth, Johnson Tsang, Brooke DiDonato and Joseph Lee, a list spanning painting, photography, sculpture, installation, digital art and interventions in public space. It isn’t the first time an artist has lent themselves to the trading card format, but it is the first time anyone has tried to bring a hundred names together inside a single collectible ecosystem.

For Katz, the point isn’t so much collecting itself as access. Contemporary art has always been sold as something scarce and expensive, reserved for those who can afford today’s prices. Trading cards flip that logic, a work becomes a pocket-sized object, tradeable, owned for a few dollars instead of thousands. It’s the same mechanism that made basketball players or Pokémon characters familiar to everyone, applied to a system, that of art, which has always made scarcity its own value.

Perhaps the question isn’t whether Contemporary100 is trivialising art, but whether art, to genuinely reach new audiences, needs to pass through this too, through a format the younger generations already know by heart.