The next Hobby star: Sophie Cunningham

ASSOCIATED PRESS

You may not realize this, but Sophie Cunningham cards are the hottest thing in collecting right now. We need to talk about this.

It’s not at all unheard of for athletes to enjoy the rapid ascent Cunningham has experienced recently. But the staying power is what we want to look at. For every Livvy Dunne, there are 100 Yermin Mercedeses…es.

Let’s look at Cunningham’s growth. There are three major points that she took advantage of:

1. Last August, she went viral with an outfit she wore that “showed off tan lines”

2. Her trade to Indiana this offseason put her alongside Caitlin Clark. Every game.

3. Her “enforcer” moment in June, when she retaliated for Clark getting poked in the eye on a probably dirty play, lifted her to another level.

Need more proof that Cunningham is on fire? Check out the “most popular” Fever gear at Fanatics:

3 of the top 6 are Cunningham shirts. One is Clark. Two are “Fever” generics. If you go to overall WNBA jerseys by sales, there’s Clark at 1, Angel Reese at 2, and then a Fever custom option at 3, because Cunningham doesn’t currently have a jersey for sale there.

Here’s “Sophie Cunningham” on Google Trends over the past year. Keep in mind her viral video last August got 15 million views. It barely makes a blip here.

That giant spike on the right is when she got the flagrant foul for retaliating on Jacy Sheldon after Clark was poked in the eye. People are sick of Clark getting destroyed and everyone shrugging it off loved it. People who already loved Cunningham were like, “yeah, see, she’s awesome!”

As for that first mini-spike in May? I think maybe it’s from when she wore a lacy outfit and made news then? But whatever the case, Cunningham is having a moment. Several of them. And her card prices are reflecting it. You can’t get a decent autographed non-Leaf card for less than $120 right now. And it’s not stopping. This is a woman who understands media.

On July 2 she went viral for twerking during a celebratory livestream after the Fever won the Commissioner’s Cup.

Late last week she knocked Cleveland and Detroit and then deftly clarified her remarks without sounding like it was written by a PR person.

And despite the google trends line predicting a downward slope, I think we may still not be at the top of the Sophie Cunningham mountain. This is an emerging superstar who will likely be doing women’s college hoops analysis at a desk after the WNBA season ends this fall. None of this feels rehearsed, she’s just…fun. Plus, Indiana is not the crappy team of the last two years, so they’ll go far and she’ll get more exposure and interviews and chances to wear attention-grabbing clothes and get in your (our) social media streams. Everyone is watching Fever games. And I’m sure a lot of people are surprised to see that Cunningham, the enforcer, is just a 6’1” guard and not a 6’7 behemoth.

We’ve seen this before, recently, with Livvy Dunne. Talent + media savvy + lots of followers = a Leaf card stardom. But even Dunne, who has a giant social following, was still “just” an LSU gymnast — she wasn’t on TV twice a week next to one of the world’s most famous athletes.

So… what are we buying?

2024 Monopoly parallels.

I’m kidding.

Or am I?

Cunningham’s 2024 Monopoly “GO” parallel before The Enforcing was $13.50. After? $21.99 and holding. She’s even made Monopoly cards a thing!!

Because I have a sickness, I also searched for Leaf holiday autographs, which completely tracks for Leaf… but they don’t exist (although she does have other Leaf cards). I searched for her cards on Fanatics Collect, which has generally been a little more buyer-friendly than eBay. There’s not much there. I keep going back to the Prizm autograph, but I also keep losing auctions. Every day I live in fear she’ll do something else cool (“Sophie Cunningham is dating Tom Cruise”) and her cards will go up another 20%.

There’s still time and space to get in on this, I just cannot figure out the perfect route.

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