Ken Griffey Jr .... any collectors out there?

[Neal]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Don't give him any ideas, he's already on a spree.

lol - true

Unmarked bag with Griffey Jr

[almostdone]

Just saw this thread for the first time. Back in the day I tried to get every mainstream Griffey card out there. Halfway through 1993 I gave up. I still collected many moving forward and picked up a few lots from time to time through the late 90’s just to expand but haven’t gotten any new ones since probably around 2002 when I discovered eBay and vintage.

I still have all of them. I think it’s somewhere between 400 to 500 different cards.

The last card shop in my town tried desperately to gain some new blood and asked if I could help organize for him. I went in a few times to help but to no avail he shut down a bit after that. He knew I liked Griffey so for payment he gave me a stack of cards he didn’t think he’d sell. In looking through them there was one I couldn’t ever find any info on. I know it was a variation card of a base set. From what I did gather they were fairly rare at the time. I need to go find it and post it here. Maybe some of you guys could help me out. It’s not a rush and I highly doubt I have some sort of “holy grail” for Griffey collectors but it would be interesting at least to find out exactly what I have after all these years.

Anyway I’ll try and dig it out and get some photos up in a day or two.

Drew

[homerunderby]

Nice thing about a Griffey collection is its not only about collecting a great player, it's collecting someone who was iconic in the hobby for about 7-8 years. You have the initial Upper Deck card which is the best known UD card in their history, you also have key cards in just about every set from 1989-95, you have some of the first in pack autographs when they went for $500-1000, you have the beginning of the limited and serial number insert craze, and for good measure you have 1 of 1's. He was also in virtually every food, regional, and postcard issue of the 90's that didn't focus on one team. And you also have the stuff that Al posted where he was shoehorned into a set which no other current player would appear.

I remember the initial 1 of 1's of superstars like Griffey going for $5-10k. Things like the Fleer Ultra 1/1's (or was it Flair?).

Griffey was a big part of the hobby in the 90's, maybe the biggest.

[Neal]

My first Desert Shield

1991 Griffey.jpg

[pokerplyr80]

Nice one neal. That and the 93 refractor have been on my want list for a while now.

[bigfanNY]

The first big 1/1 cards were 1987 Flair Masterpiece cards. Each player had 3 variations row 0 row 1 and row 2. I do remember someone using Ebay to buy all 3 Griffey Jr's paying like 15k for the last one he needed.. The flair Legacy cards 1/150 still sell well as player collectors chase them down. I will post some of my jr collection tomorrow.