How it started

Catawiki was established in Assen, The Netherlands, by comic books collector René Schoenmakers and IT developer Marco Jansen.
Back in 2008, René would spend hours online, passionately searching for rare comic books to add to his collection – with little success. Marco chimed in and together, they created Catawiki as a place for collectors to interact with each other and keep track of their collections. The name Catawiki is a combination of the words ‘catalogue’ and ‘wiki’.
The website quickly gained popularity, and in 2011 the founders introduced an auction feature. To ensure that auctions would always feature special and high quality objects, they started hiring Experts who would review and select each submission before publishing it online.
Over the years, many more special objects and Experts have been added across categories that now span Collectables, Art, Design, Jewellery, Fashion, Classic Cars, Watches, Wine and many more.

Today, over 75,000 objects are auctioned every week. Yet, the majority of special objects are still sold offline. Our mission is to bring this traditionally offline world online, with Catawiki as the most popular destination for special objects.

Learn how you can grow with us

Our numbers

In 2021, Catawiki auctioned over 3 million special objects – adding to our total of over 10 million objects to date.
Highlights include artworks ranging from Banksy to Monet, Sylvester Stallone’s Ford Mustang, an edition of Amazing Fantasy #15: The Origin of Spider-Man, the oldest stamp in the world, a piece of the moon, Lady Gaga’s dress, a Mammoth’s skeleton and so much more.
We’re a global marketplace with buyers and sellers from all over the world. In fact, two thirds of the earnings of Catawiki sellers stem from buyers outside of their own market..
We obtained a €150 million investment in 2021, led by investment firm Permira, empowering Catawiki’s potential to become the most popular destination for special objects across the globe.
Over 1 million people placed a bid in 2021. Our buyers are happy: over 98% of all reviews submitted by buyers in 2021 were positive. It shows, because close to 90% of all spendings on Catawiki in 2021 came from returning buyers.

Our Values

Take ownership

We’re continually building. Each and every one of us takes initiative to grow our business.

Delight our customer

We strive to be our customers’ preferred destination in their ongoing search for the special objects that fulfil their passions.

Move in Sync

We each play a role in Catawiki’s success and we only succeed if we are successful together.

Be Geeky

We embrace new and scalable technologies to be able to lead the offline to online transition of the world of special objects.

Be Open

We are always learning and evolving in order to challenge convention. We remain humble, flexible and curious.

Be Passionate

We go deep, solve complex problems and innovate in order to be experts in our fields.

Our commitment

Catawiki’s eclectic team represents an international and intergenerational mix of people from different professional and cultural backgrounds. We foster an inclusive and queer-friendly work environment, committed to making every Catawikian feel welcomed and empowered. Whatever your story, we encourage you to bring your unique perspective to the table.

Catawiki stands with Ukraine and encourages people displaced by the current conflict to apply. In addition to the several initiatives we’ve launched, we’re open to ideas on ways we can continue to support the humanitarian effort.

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