What Is Loupe?

Loupe is a Los Angeles startup founded in 2020 by Eric Doty, purpose-built around one format: the group break. Unlike broader live-commerce platforms that also sell sneakers, collectibles, or general merchandise, Loupe's entire catalog is sports (and some non-sports trading card game) product, and every feature in the app — claiming slots, watching the live rip, instant resale — is designed around that one mechanic.

• Team breaks— buyers pay for a specific team or division and get whatever cards for that team come out of the box.
• Random breaks— slots are assigned by random draw after checkout, cheaper than picking a team outright.
• Pick-your-team and hit-draft formats— variants that let buyers select a team directly or draft hits in turn order once a box is opened.
• Checkout and shipping— buyers pay instantly in-app (Apple Pay and standard card checkout), the seller breaks the box live on camera in front of the audience, and cards ship to the buyer afterward — or the seller can ship an unbroken product for the buyer to break themselves.

• Approval required— Loupe reviews sellers before granting live-broadcast access rather than letting anyone go live on sign-up, the same gate used by other live-selling apps.
• Buyer-side platform fee— Loupe adds a platform fee on top of the seller's slot price, shown at checkout before the buyer confirms. Because that fee layers onto an already-marked-up break price, the all-in cost of a box broken live typically runs well above buying the same sealed box outright.
• Free to download— there's no subscription to browse or watch; the fee is baked into what buyers pay per slot.

1. Card-only focus — Whatnot spans trading cards, sneakers, collectibles, and more as separate categories on one general live-commerce platform. Loupe is cards only, with the app's navigation, formats, and seller tools all built around breaks specifically rather than a general live-auction format.
2. Independent vs. corporate-backed — Fanatics Live is owned by Fanatics and plugged into its Topps manufacturing and Fanatics Collect marketplace, and DACW Live runs inside Dave & Adam's own retail operation. Loupe is an independently funded startup (roughly $15M raised across seed and Series A rounds) with no manufacturer or retailer parent, so its seller base is other independent breakers rather than one company's own inventory.
3. Auction vs. break-only— Whatnot and Fanatics Live both support single-card timed auctions in addition to breaks. Loupe is built around the break as the core unit of sale rather than card-by-card bidding.
4. Verify before you buy a slot— the same rule applies on any break app: check a seller's show history and ratings before paying, and remember a break slot's price is set by the seller's markup on the box, not by the odds of hitting a specific card, the same math covered in how to avoid sports card buying scams.

Confirm the exact card with Identify & Research — free-path first (on-device OCR, catalog match, and fingerprints). For the break mechanics Loupe is built around see What Is a Sports Card Group Break?, for the closest general-commerce competitor see What Is Whatnot?, for Fanatics' own live-selling app see What Is Fanatics Live?, for how the same rip-and-ship format plays out on a general social app see What Is TikTok Shop?, and for buying-scam red flags that apply on any live platform see How to Avoid Sports Card Buying Scams.