This week marks the 40th anniversary of the first-ever USWNT match, and sports and entertainment memorabilia authenticator The Realest has teamed up with the 1985 roster's 17 founding members to drop a limited-edition '85ers tribute collection.
The collection also coincides with the launch of The 85ers LLC, a first-of-its-kind athlete-owned business backed by the original USWNT players.
"The opportunity to re-design our uniforms, on our terms, to reflect what we would have wanted to wear back in 1985 is incredibly meaningful," said two-time World Cup champion Michelle Akers, who took the field in that inaugural match on August 18th, 1985, in Jesolo, Italy.
Before traveling to Italy for the four-team tournament, USWNT players had to sew USA patches onto hand-me-down men's jerseys — a story that deeply impacted Scott Keeney, founder and CEO of The Realest.
"For a national team, that just felt unbelievable," Keeney told The Athletic about what sparked his company's partnership with the '85ers.
The '85ers capsule collection features the player-designed replica jersey, as well as a T-shirt, a trucker hat, and a commemorative team trading card.
"We designed something modernized but true to the colors and style of that first game in 1985," he continued, explaining that "It's about taking something that was overlooked at the time and flipping it into a moment of pride."
"To have these jerseys now available for us with our names on them, created by us, for us, is really special," Akers told The Athletic. "It's continuing this legacy that we started 40 years ago, but also hopefully it'll impact other people and bring together the past generations into the future."
How to buy the USWNT '85ers memorabilia collection
All items in the limited-edition USWNT '85ers collection are currently available for purchase at The Realest.
Caitlin Clark is smashing records from the sidelines, as a signed, one-of-one trading card depicting the Indiana Fever superstar sold for $660,000 on Thursday, becoming the most expensive women's sports card of all time.
Entering extended bidding at $336,000, 26 bidders put in for the "2024 Panini Flawless WNBA Platinum Rookie Logowoman Patch" card at the Fanatics Collect July Premier Auction on Thursday night.
Bearing Clark's signature alongside a note reading "769 points and counting" — the Fever guard's 2024 WNBA rookie season scoring total — the sale far exceeded the previous high of $366,000 paid for the former No. 1 draft pick's 2024 Panini Prizm card last March.
As both the WNBA and trading cards experience a surge in popularity, a full 10 of Clark's official cards have now passed the $100,000 mark at auction.
Additionally, 14 Clark cards have sold for more than her second-year WNBA salary of $78,066, with the most recent record-breaking bid outpacing the entirety of her four-year, $338,056 contract with Indiana.
The demand for one-of-a-kind women's sports memorabilia has skyrocketed in recent years, with trading cards seeing a particularly stunning boom.
The leap in card market value has been meteoric, with Thursday's Clark card sale representing a more than 6,100% increase over the then-record $10,800 that 2020 WNBA No. 1 draft pick and New York Liberty star Sabrina Ionescu's 2020 Panini Prizm WNBA Black Gold card garnered in February 2023.