It feels like there is nothing Caitlin Clark can’t do. And she just got one over on some of her NBA counterparts.
The Indiana Fever point guard is considered one of the greatest collegiate basketball players of all time — male or female — and has been taking the WNBA by storm ever since being drafted No. 1 overall in 2024.
Clark has notably broken record after record, a truth that began back in 2020 when she became a starter and leader for the Hawkeyes as a freshman. Her accolades as a 23-year-old feel as long as an infamous CVS receipt.
On April 15, 2024, the Fever drafted her as the top overall pick. That same month, she graced the cover of SLAM magazine in her Iowa Hawkeyes jersey, adorned with the headline: “The Legend of Caitlin Clark Is Just Beginning.”
Not that the declaration needed any proving, but it did just get a little bump up in the world of collectibles.
Caitlin Clark's SLAM cover just set a big sales record
The single-highest graded copy of that magazine sold Saturday at Goldin Auctions for a record $4,819 — the most ever paid for a copy of SLAM, a magazine that has featured NBA greats like LeBron James, Steph Curry and Kobe Bryant on its cover.
According to Will Stern, a reporter and editor for cllct, it’s one of around 10 SLAM magazines ever given a CGC 9.9.
Certified Guaranty Company (CGC) grades copies of magazines, trading cards, and comic books. A 9.9 score indicates that a copy will have “a very minor manufacturing defect” and “will not have any evidence of handling defects,” according to CGC’s website. A 9.8 indicates “a nearly perfect collectible with negligible handling or manufacturing defects.”
CGC has graded more than 250 copies of the Clark debut magazine total, and more than 150 of them came in at CGC 9.8.
Magazine covers are often sought after, but usually not SLAM’s, especially with a female athlete on the front. They have been increasingly seen as a different version of a trading card.
According to CGC, a 1984 copy of Sports Illustrated with Michael Jordan on the cover — the NBA Hall of Famer’s first appearance on the iconic brand’s front — sold for a record $126,000 in Heritage Auctions’ Summer Platinum Night Sports Auction in August 2023.
Clark, who won both the Naismith College Player of the Year at Iowa in 2023 and 2024, was again on the cover of SLAM in May for the magazine’s WNBA preview edition. The “gold metal” variant (numbered to 94 copies and priced at $94) of the magazine immediately sold out.
In her rookie season with the Fever, she won the WNBA Rookie of the Year award and made the All-WNBA First Team and WNBA All-Star Game. She set league single-season and single-game records in assists and broke the rookie scoring and assists records. In December 2024, Clark was named Athlete of the Year by Time magazine and Female Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press.
By now, we all know — and respect — Clark’s lore, her accolades, and her overall impact on the game of basketball. It’s just pretty cool to see her do something that NBA legends like James, Curry, and Bryant ever did, regardless of it being an off-the-court feat.
Most recently, she was asked by FanSided if she could outshoot Curry or LeBron to which she politely declined that possibly and humbly said: "I'd just be happy to be there, though."