Found - 1989 Upper Deck Murphy Reverse Negative

[Harliduck]

Thought I would share a funny story...

In 1989 I was 18 years old and working at a grocery store. Like everyone else in that era, I was caught up in the junk wax craze and living in Seattle we had Griffey fever. I had one advantage, myself and a buddy had access to all the cards coming into our store. We bought everything we could get our hands on...good times.

We bought and opened several cases of packs chasing Griffey, and even had a case of Upper Deck factory sets come in. We bought that case and flipped most of the sets, kept a few for ourselves. I remember at the time the chase of the reversed Dale Murphy card, but like most big time errors of the time (and most assuredly a purposeful error on UD's part), but never thought I'd actually get one. And I never did, and I opened A LOT of Upper Deck that year.

Fast forward a bunch of years, like to 3 years ago...and my son wanted a Griffey Jr rookie. I told him I had 1 factory set I never did get rid of from back in the day (kept 1 so I had the set)...let's pop it and hope for a nice "10" Griffey. Well...we did...and pulled a nice OC card...then had to explain that nope, never a 10. Ok, well he had his card...kept it raw...all good. Set went back into "storage" in it's box.

Fast forward again...I decided to add the 89 and 90 UD sets to my binder run...got the binders, sheets, and set out to fill em in. Low and behold, I get to the Murphy...I have the reversed negative?? I've been sitting on it since 1989! If I remember right this card was suppose to only be in packs? I do know the sets we bought were among the first, we were popular guys back then...but I know I would have been told there was a Murphy in the other sets we sold...unless they are all still unopened in closets? A quick ebay search to find they are still worth a couple of bucks much to my surprise. I dug through one of my old junk boxes to find a "regular" card for the binder and noticed they look really cool together and brought back some nice memories. So...thought I would share -




A friend of mine who is a Murphy freaked asked for the card, he never had one back in the day and still keeps his 77 Topps RC close. I obliged, gave it to him, then went on Ebay and bought one for a little over $50...so the long and short of it I ruined my big wind fall...but all I kept thinking about was this card was worth a bit more in the height of the craze. I can't remember what it topped out at, but the card currently in my set has been on quite an adventure I'm sure...

Good memories...and luck hit me...32 years later!!!!