WNBA: Caitlin Clark tops listing for ladies’s basketball buying and selling playing cards

The WNBA season is perhaps over for Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever, however that doesn’t imply that her impression on girls’s basketball lessens.

In line with the information collected by PSA (Skilled Sports activities Authenticator), her playing cards had been graded 18x greater than the subsequent girls’s basketball gamers in 2024: a real illustration of Clark’s recognition among the many followers. Curiously, spots quantity two and three are lined by NCAA gamers, whereas spots 4 and 5 are occupied by Clark’s fellow WNBA rookies. That is simply one other indication that we’re on the brink (no pun meant) of one thing particular with regards to the recognition of girls’s sports activities.

PSA’S TOP 5 WOMEN’S BASKETBALL PLAYERS IN 2024*

Caitlin Clark (Indiana Fever): 42k

Paige Bueckers (UConn Huskies): 3.7k

JuJu Watkins (USC Trojans): 2.3k

Angel Reese (Chicago Sky): 2.2k

Cameron Brink (Los Angeles Sparks): 1.1k

*Based mostly on volumes of playing cards PSA graded from January 2024 to August 2024

To be taught extra of the importance of those numbers, we talked to PSA President Ryan Hoge.

How does Caitlin Clark stack in opposition to different girls athletes’ playing cards that you understand of? Traditionally, with regards to worth, and throughout all disciplines.

Caitlin Clark’s pastime bounce prior to now yr alone is fairly unprecedented when taking a look at pastime historical past. The current progress of girls’s sports activities has helped catalyze an increase in gathering girls athletes, whether or not it’s new or longtime collectors. Sabrina Ionescu’s playing cards had some momentum to them when she first landed within the WNBA, however as a result of NIL is comparatively new, Caitlin Clark had this unbelievable pastime runway all through her record-breaking faculty profession, the place she had fully-licensed playing cards in an Iowa uniform out there in the marketplace.

When it comes to card values, Clark presently holds the file for highest and second-highest sale value for a girls’s basketball card. Final week, Clark’s Panini Draft Night time Blue Viper 1/1 Autograph card bought for $84,000 at public sale, surpassing the earlier WNBA card sale file of $78,000 for Clark’s 2022 Bowman College Chrome 1st Bowman 1/1 Superfractor Auto PSA 10, which bought in Jan. 2024. In established girls’s sports activities classes, Serena Williams playing cards actually started to develop in value and demand in 2020 and 2021; Williams’ playing cards have bought for greater than $200,000 in the marketplace. However we will’t actually evaluate these or different disciplines with girls’s basketball as a result of it’s simply coming into its progress second on the courtroom and within the pastime.

When a high-growth class akin to girls’s basketball is rising within the pastime, we start to see extra curiosity in each the rising faculty stars and the professionals on the grading aspect as a result of persons are on the lookout for early gems and need high-quality. Girls’s basketball is the class that’s having an actual progress second and is ready to take off, and the values will solely proceed to climb with the game as we see stars like Clark and Angel Reese take heart stage.

Why do you suppose the school gamers are extra fashionable than nearly all WNBA gamers?

Collectors as we speak are savvy sufficient to know that if a serious star in any sport emerges, getting in early is essential to constructing a beneficial assortment. Like we noticed with Hen, Magic, Jordan and others [in the NBA] within the Eighties, the WNBA and girls’s faculty basketball is witnessing an inflow of expertise like we’ve by no means seen earlier than. And all of it begins with Caitlin Clark.

Whereas Clark was breaking information at Iowa, folks started to totally understand the skills of her friends within the girls’s sport, akin to Angel Reese, Paige Bueckers and JuJu Watkins. In flip, the previous two girls’s March Insanity tournaments noticed large viewership numbers which have dramatically raised the profile of their sport.

On the similar time, NIL allowed for school gamers to have fully-licensed playing cards in the marketplace, permitting followers to get the earliest variations of gamers’ playing cards, probably creating a brand new “rookie” class. Whereas it stays to be seen whether or not their WNBA rookie playing cards might be in greater demand, proper now the current reminiscence of their faculty careers is recent in folks’s minds, and our numbers replicate that.

Do you see the Caitlin Clark Impact at work right here too, which means did her recognition contribute to the rise in worth of different gamers’ playing cards?

The visibility she’s dropped at the pastime and the game is with out query the largest catalyst. Clark has clearly been on the forefront of girls’s basketball card submissions, and the “rising tide lifts all boats” analogy is actually true right here, as we’ve seen a rise throughout girls’s basketball participant card submissions total. Top of the range playing cards develop into a much bigger precedence in fast-growing markets, which is after we see spikes in playing cards submitted for grading. In August 2024, Clark’s month-to-month whole of graded playing cards on PSA was up over 20,000 p.c in comparison with when Clark’s first buying and selling playing cards had been launched in Could 2023.

What do you suppose the way forward for the cardboard trade is and the way will girls athletes issue into it?

The explosion of girls’s sports activities provides an unbelievable progress alternative for the cardboard trade. We’re already seeing an enormous inflow of recent collectors due to Clark, Reese, Bueckers and the opposite rising stars. As these stars brighten together with their league’s progress, it appears solely pure for a girls athletes card market to blossom. At PSA, we’re authenticating and preserving these items of sports activities historical past, and what has develop into investment-grade belongings for a lot of. We’re additionally a key touchpoint that almost all of collectors work together with, and quantity of card submissions are a great indicator of worth and demand inside a class. All indicators are pointing to girls’s basketball (and different sports activities) being prepared to leap to the subsequent degree. We’ll probably proceed to see progress throughout girls’s sports activities playing cards because the class continues gaining traction within the mainstream.