Two of the most important Caitlin Clark rookie cards are set to sell in a pair of dueling high-end auctions that could deliver a series of landmark moments for Clark and WNBA trading cards at large.
The 2024-25 Flawless WNBA Logowoman, currently selling at Fanatics Collect, is signed and inscribed with Clark’s rookie season scoring total.
In an interview with cllct, Fanatics Collect vice president Kevin Lenane called the card an important moment for the hobby while citing its potential to eclipse the current public record for Clark — and any card featuring a female athlete — of $366,000.
At Goldin, the auction house currently responsible for nine of the top 10 and 14 of the top 20 Clark sales, the 2024-25 Immaculate Logowoman, signed and inscribed with “ROY 24,” is also poised to challenge Clark’s public record.
In a video announcing the consignment, Goldin founder Ken Goldin called it “perhaps the finest Caitlin Clark card ever to come to public auction.”
Less than one week into each offering, both cards sit at $180,000, before buyer’s premium.
The Flawless Logowoman ends with Fanatics Collect’s July Premier Auction in eight days. The Immaculate Logowoman ends in Goldin’s July Elite Auction on Aug. 9.
Individually, each card presents as arguably the best ever created for one of the most important athletes of a generation. Clark is also already positioned as one of the most influential figures in the ultra-modern era of collecting.
Together, the cards offer a unique opportunity to gauge collector sentiment in a variety of areas.
Announced by their respective auction houses last week, the pair of cards both arrived as part of Panini America’s 2024 Rookie Royalty WNBA set earlier this month. The first ultra high-end WNBA product created by Panini, boxes of Rookie Royalty WNBA eventually sold out via Dutch auction for a minimum of $3,000 per two-card box.
On its own, Rookie Royalty WNBA offered up its own set of critical data points.
Was there an appetite for an ultra high-end WNBA product? It was hard to tell when the set reached the auction floor of $3,000 per box. The configuration of Rookie Royalty delivered just two cards with a guarantee of one autographed card from either Clark or Chicago Sky star Angel Reese.
Though both are popular players among basketball fans, the delta between the two among collectors is significant — Reese’s record public sale, according to data tool Card Ladder, is just $8,500. Clark would clearly be the key chase for the product, but how other players performed on the secondary market would be an important variable for the league as a whole.
When searching eBay data tool Terapeak for confirmed sales of “Rookie Royalty WNBA,” just two of the 34 cards to fetch more than the product’s floor of $3,000 featured a player other than Clark. In the days after release, sealed boxes have sold for as much as $14,250 each, but individual card sales indicate those prices are driven by the chase for Clark — especially high-end patches and autographs — more than interest in a premier set for the WNBA.
The two Logowoman cards selling simultaneously, despite ending more than a week apart, will present their own data points, and the nuance is critical.
Selling individually, each could compete for Clark’s public record of $366,000. A pair of dueling auctions complicates things, however, and it’s not difficult to see a number of realities playing out.
There’s the chance the cards cannibalize each other and both finish with lower, non-record results.
Ending in a little more than a week, Fanatics Collect’s Flawless Logowoman will surely have a major impact on Goldin’s Immaculate example. A massive result for the Flawless could leave the Immaculate without potentially its strongest buyer and a disappointing sale could even stifle interest at Goldin.
A tight finish could create additional motivation for an underbidder, possibly helping deliver a better result for the Immaculate.
The number of collectors hunting for cards at this level is small, but it only takes two to drive prices to record highs. Poor results can probably be written off to unfortunate auction timing, but record sales could be an indicator Clark’s market is even stronger than initially expected.
The quality of the patches themselves is also a critical element to consider.
To date, the highest price logged publicly for a Clark RPA is the $68,000 paid for a Rookie Royalty WNBA RPA Green /5 via a private sale earlier this month. So far, her market has been dominated by high-end, super short-printed autographed parallels rather than memorabilia.
Though Rookie Royalty WNBA contains the best Clark RPAs to date, context matters, and some high-end collectors might avoid the current Clark offerings because of how the memorabilia was sourced.
Logowoman cards, like the Logoman cards that have captivated the hobby since first appearing in Upper Deck’s 2002-03 NBA Logo Mania set, have become the most coveted patches for WNBA cards. These patches up for auction, however, are attributed by Panini as “not associated with any specific player, game, or event.”
Could the patches have been worn by Clark? Conceivably. Does the verbiage create doubt? Certainly.
For collectors, game-worn memorabilia is best. Player-worn, meaning the player depicted on the card likely wore the item during an event rather than a game, has become more accepted but is less desired.
Patches labeled as “not associated” are the least desirable and can feature any kind of memorabilia from any player — a possible warning sign for those playing at the highest end of the market.
For some collectors, “not associated” patches are a non-starter. There’s also evidence that the verbiage might not matter at all.
Victor Wembanyama’s 2023 National Treasures Logoman 1/1 PSA 9 sold for $528,000 at Fanatics Collect in March to become his second-most expensive public sale to date. That patch was also labeled as “not associated with any specific player, game, or event.”
Could it have sold for more as a game-worn patch? Possibly. Can it be clearly stated the type of patch explicitly harmed the auction? It’s hard to know.
The “not-associated” verbiage could be especially frustrating for high-end collectors hunting Flawless RPAs specifically. In the hierarchy of ultra high-end Panini products, Flawless has elevated itself in recent years as savvy collectors put more emphasis on hunting the best RPAs rather than the first.
The earliest RPAs often feature player-worn materials, and though Flawless is released later in the product cycle, the game-worn memorabilia has traditionally made it worth the wait.
With both cards featuring “not associated” materials, the advantage Flawless might normally have as a brand over some Immaculate cards seems less important. How the cards perform at auction could provide insight into how much collectors value the materials and whether or not the traditional high-end hierarchy still applies when the elements that typically influence that order aren’t present.
With materials on equal footing, the inscriptions could be more of a difference-maker. Anything “ROY”-related could drive a premium, though Clark’s rookie scoring total is likely a more unique inclusion.
A slow start to her second season, coupled with recent injuries for Clark, could conceivably impact high-end sales, though the market hasn’t made many indications interest is lagging. According to Market Movers, Clark has been the third best-selling athlete in terms of sales volume over the last 30 days, 60 days and 90 days, behind only Michael Jordan and Jayden Daniels.
Over the last year, Market Movers has logged more than 100,000 sales for Clark — the fifth-most of the players tracked by the tool. If collector sentiment is shifting, it hasn’t appeared in the volume quite yet.
An apparent groin injury Tuesday night could keep Clark out of WNBA All-Star competitions this weekend, and though that likely doesn’t have a widespread impact on her market, important cultural moments can sometimes affect individual auctions, and this could end up as a missed opportunity.
At the most basic level, there are two similar but important Clark cards set to sell within days of each other.
But context matters, and these two sales could end up providing valuable insight into everything from patches and autographs to the market at large. Poor sales might be the result of a number of factors moving against the cards specifically, but record prices could indicate Clark is continuing her role as the rising tide that has lifted markets of all kinds across the sporting world.
Ben Burrows is a reporter and editor for cllct, the premier company for collectible culture. He was previously the Collectibles Editor at Sports Illustrated. You can follow him on X and Instagram @benmburrows.