For the past three years, Caitlin Clark has been one of the most popular athletes in the world. Her senior season at Iowa and rookie season in the WNBA with the Indiana Fever helped smash viewership records at the college and professional levels for women’s basketball, and that surge in popularity seems to be a trend that is sustaining.
One of this weekend’s most discussed sporting events was the Fever’s season opener against the Chicago Sky, where we got the latest chapter in the growing rivalry between Clark and Angel Reese, which dates back to their junior seasons in college. Those two aren’t just driving viewership of their exploits on the court, but they’re also leading women’s basketball into a new era of popularity off of it in the collectibles and trading card space.
Professional Sports Authenticators (PSA), the biggest sports card grader, has seen a huge spike in WNBA trading cards that have been sent in for grading since the start of last season, with Clark leading the way by a staggering degree. PSA graded 62% more WNBA cards this March compared to last March, and over the last year more than 105,000 Clark cards have been graded by PSA, with Reese having the second most with 7,200 and Dallas Wings rookie Paige Bueckers in third at 6,400.
CBS Sports spoke with PSA president Ryan Hoge last week about the surge in WNBA cards and specifically Clark cards last week, and he noted the volume of Clark cards compared to other players is unlike anything he’s seen with any other sport.
“No, nothing jumps out at me,” Hoge said when asked if there’s a comparable player in any other sport. “I mean, if you look at the other sports, like Shohei Ohtani dominates baseball submission, but there’s other players, both retired and current, that are still up there that are pretty close — like, maybe two thirds or half of that quantity. Victor Wembanyama last year dominated [men’s] basketball. But you’re also still seeing Michael Jordan and LeBron James and Kobe Bryant, like they’re still on the list. Yeah. So I think this is really, really unique. And I think it says something about Caitlin Clark and her star power.”
It’s not surprising that the list of the most popular WNBA cards being graded by PSA are players who recently entered the league, as a big part of card collecting is speculating on young players to become major stars and driving up the value of their cards later in their careers. Rookie cards have always been coveted by collectors, which is why the list of players being graded is topped by Clark, Reese, Bueckers and Cameron Brink, over established stars like A’ja Wilson, Breanna Stewart or Napheesa Collier.
Those stars also entered the WNBA before card manufacturers really started to make premium WNBA cards that collector’s seek out. As women’s sports fans have pointed out for years, when you treat women’s sports like men’s sports, whether that’s putting games on national TV or creating premium trading cards, the fans will follow.
Clark’s deal with Panini puts her on the same premium card brands — Select, Prizm, etc. — that collectors get with NBA stars, and it’s already led to a Clark card breaking the record of the most expensive women’s sports card ever auctioned off, as a 1-of-1 autograph insert Prizm gold card sold for $366,000 at a Goldin auction last year.
As women’s basketball continues to surge in popularity, the collectible space will follow suit. Clark is the driving force as one of the most popular athletes in any sport, but as more young stars enter the league like Bueckers, Juju Watkins and others, the trend figures to continue across the sport.
“It does feel like the trends are all pointing in the right direction,” Hoge said. “And yeah, it’s heavily concentrated with Caitlin Clark, but even if you look at folks like Angel Reese or Paige Bueckers or Cameron Brink, or Juju Watkins, who doesn’t have a WNBA card yet, but she’s got some Bowman U cards in her USC uniform. Those have all seen pretty notable growth over the last year and even in the last, say, three or four months. So I think this is a trend, and we’ve seen the trends playing out for several years now. So yeah, I think it’s correlated too with overall fan interest in women’s basketball.”
This news was originally published on this post .
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