From Stewart to Clark: The History of Women’s Sports Cards

By Graham Jones

On March 29, Caitlin Clark made history when one of her rookie cards sold for $366,000, setting a new record. This milestone represents the peak of a journey that began in the late 1800s when women's sports cards first emerged in an industry dominated by male athletes.

Clark's record-breaking sale signals a shift in the sports collectibles market. Collectors and memorabilia experts report increasing volume and value for women's sports cards and broader changes in sports culture.

Trading cards have been a cornerstone of sports fandom since the early days of organized sports, promoting athletes and providing tangible connections between fans and their heroes, said Cindy Dick, owner of On Her Mark Collectibles, one of the largest collections of vintage women's sports cards in the world.

“Basically, [it was] like a business card. It was a card of their trade,” Dick said. “If you made shoes, it might be a picture of your shoe logo, and it would be given out with your product that you just sold. And so that was called a trade card.”

For professional athletes, the trade was sports.

These early trading cards often appeared on cigarette packages, where manufacturers initially inserted cardboard stiffening pieces before recognizing their marketing potential. Athletes quickly became the most sought-after subjects.

For most of the 1800s, women were prevented from participating in competitive sports. Toward the close of the century, however, some women began creating “informal athletic clubs” for swimming, horseback riding, tennis and golf. Early tobacco cards occasionally depicted well-dressed women carrying rackets or golf clubs.  

Hattie Stewart, an American boxer from Virginia, became one of the first competitive female athletes featured on a trading card in 1887. She appeared after self-declaring she was “the best boxer in the world,” making her tobacco card more of a novelty than the norm in an era when women's boxing wasn’t widely accepted.

 

The Early Days

The 1900 Olympics marked women's first participation in the Games, with 22 female competitors among 997 athletes. By 1922, the first Women’s Olympics highlighted track and field stars, generating a wave of trading cards featuring female athletes, like Mildred “Babe” Dietrickson. 

“She was brash and cocky and probably the best athlete in the first half of the 20th century,” Dick said. “She did not fit the feminine standard at all … it just sort of created this black eye for track and field and women.”

A cultural backlash followed in the United States, leading to the creation of “play days,” events promoted by female physical educators as “an alternative model of sport for women that emphasized participation over competition,” according to The International Journal of the History of Sport.

These games, which included dodgeball volleyball and sack races, gave women the chance to participate in sports while maintaining the gender roles of the 1920s—and reducing the number of trading cards featuring female American athletes.

Europe, particularly Germany, took a different approach after World War I, Dick said. Facing declining birth rates, German society shifted expectations of women, valuing physical strength to create strong babies. This created more opportunities for women in sports, spurring a new wave of European trading cards featuring female athletes.

World War II transformed American sports as male athletes were drafted, leaving professional leagues without players. Just as women began filling the empty spots in factory jobs, they also began filling the vacant roles in sports, leading to the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Several baseball card series featured these players, who were depicted similarly to their male counterparts. Though the league folded in 1954, it gained pop-culture immortality through its cards and the 1992 film “A League of Their Own.”

 

The New Frontier

The 1990s brought change as movement occurred after companies began printing and selling trading cards without accompanying products like cigarettes or gum. Dick said an industry boom followed, with cards featuring nearly every athlete and sport. While this oversaturated the market, more female athletes appeared on the cards, coinciding with the establishment of the Women’s National Basketball Association in 1997.

Nate Washington, collector and owner of Utah Premier Sports Cards & Memorabilia, said interest in women’s sports cards has grown steadily since 2000, with growth skyrocketing in the 2010s. 

James Hood of 3H Collectibles in Utah, said there has also been an increase in sports cards featuring female athletes and collectors.

“We've seen an uptick in not only women collecting but people collecting women's memorabilia,” Hood said. “Now, [we have]our own section for women's sports, not only in cards but of women’s jerseys and women’s signed autographs as well.”

Jordan Hulet, a collector alongside Hood, said she loves sharing her enthusiasm with young, female athletes inspired by the women on the cards. 

“Some of them are soccer players, and you just want them to know that this [could be their] path,” she said. “‘You can be on a card one day.’”