Iconic 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card stands test of time

Ryan Fagan

Iconic 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card stands test of time image

On any list of the most iconic baseball cards of all time, you will find the smiling face of a young George Kenneth Griffey, with a bat resting on his left shoulder and an airbrushed Mariners hat sitting on the top of his head. 

The crisp white borders of Upper Deck’s ground-breaking issue, with the Star Rookie logo just above his name in the lower-right corner adds to the “premium” feel. And the fact that Upper Deck chose Junior Griffey as the No. 1 card in its debut set? Just perfect. There is no such thing as a “bad” Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card, but the Upper Deck card stands alone. 

That was true from the moment that collectors started ripping open the foil packs and started immediately putting the Griffey in binders or screw-down cases. And it’s still true now, as the Mariners’ baseball legend takes center stage as MLB hosts its All-Star festivities in Seattle. You will see Griffey pretty much everywhere, which means that even if you don’t see his Upper Deck RC, you’ll probably be thinking about it. 

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For starters, Griffey was the host of the HBCU Swingman Classic on Friday, an All-Star Game with 25 players on each roster, with every player from a HBCU (Historically Black Colleges & Universities) baseball team. Jerry Manuel and Bo Porter are the managers, with Andre Dawson, Vince Coleman, Rickie Weeks Jr. and Marquis Grissom as coaches. Here’s hoping the sponsors give each player a copy of Griffey’s Upper Deck RC. 

So where exactly does that Griffey RC fall on the iconic cards list? 

“I put it at No. 3, to be honest,” said Ryan Cracknell, the Hobby Editor at Beckett. “You have the (T206) Honus Wagner, the ’52 Mantle, then the ’89 Upper Deck Griffey. Without question, without hesitation for me personally, my opinion that's where it sits, No. 3.” 

That’s quite the company for Griffey. 

There was a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle, graded 9.5 by SGC, that sold for $12.6 million. One of the T206 Honus Wagner cards sold for $7.25 million. We’ll get to the value of the Griffey in a moment, but first: Value matters for any “iconic” list, sure, but it’s not the biggest consideration. For example, you won’t find a single person who actively collected in the junk wax era who will tell you that the 1993 Upper Deck SP Derek Jeter was a better card than the 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr., even though the Jeter sells for significantly more now. 

The Griffey card was a monster from the moment it was released. In a way few cards ever have, it was a piece of glossy cardboard that became a fabric of the culture. Most every card in the junk wax era — loosely defined as 1987-93, when card companies just mashed the print button and printed literally millions and millions of cards every year — is relatively worthless. 

This Griffey is an exception. So … why? 

“His smile, it captures his personality. There’s just so much to it,” Cracknell said. “It genuinely is a piece of art, it’s mass-produced art, just like a Thomas Kinkade or whatever else. They sell that many copies because there’s that emotional connection to it.

“If you want to call it the perfect card, it’s the perfect card. That’s the touch point. It symbolizes all of those things that were going on in sports and cards and culture. In the technology of cards, the evolution of them, all those things. He crossed cultures, you know? No matter what background you came from, the color of your skin, whatever.”

And if you owned an Upper Deck Griffey as a kid, it felt special. You knew you had something valuable. The card was important. That kid with the backwards hat, doing amazing things on highlight reels, you owned his best rookie card. You felt like you had a piece of the action, there in your binder. At least, that’s what I would imagine. 

I opened a bunch of packs of 1989 Upper Deck back then — whenever I’d saved enough allowance and had resisted the urge to buy the cheaper Topps and Donruss packs — and never got a Griffey. My cousin had one, and even though someone had accidentally (I assume) used a hole-punch along the bottom edge, I was still insanely jealous, and would ask to just look at it. I tried to trade for it many times, but he wasn’t interested.

Even then, I couldn’t blame him. Still don’t, to be honest. All these years later, I finally got my own Griffey, thanks to a couple of kind folks in the hobby

What is a 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr. card worth?

The obvious answer is this: It depends. Is it graded? Graded by which company? Is it autographed and authenticated? But let’s keep it simple.

If you want to buy an ungraded card on eBay that looks like it’s in good shape, that will cost somewhere in the $50-$75 range. That’s kind of a buyer-beware situation, though; as with any sought-after product, there are fakes out there. 

So maybe you’d feel better buying something that’s been graded, by PSA or Beckett or SGC or another grading company. Cool. Looking at PSA sold listings — PSA is the “industry leader” and cards with a PSA label generally sell for more than cards graded by any other company — you can generally get a PSA 9 for $180-$230, depending on whether you get lucky with an auction or choose a buy-it-now option. For a PSA 8, in the $70-$80 range.

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If you want a PSA 10 Griffey RC — and who wouldn’t? — that’s going to cost in the neighborhood of $2,000. On that list of iconic cards we mentioned, that’s a drop in the bucket.

Heck, even for 2023 Bowman products, that’s nothing. I did a quick look at sold listings for how many 2023 Bowman baseball cards — non-graded only — have sold on eBay for more than $2,000, and I stopped counting when I got past 100. I had just barely gotten below the $3,000 mark, much less $2,000. There are more than 50 Druw Jones cards alone that have sold for at least $2,000. 

Again, context matters. All of those cards selling for thousands of dollars, they are numbered and/or autographed. It’s how card manufacturers drive up value, by creating the appearances of scarcity, or exclusivity. But the Griffey RC, those are all exactly the same, and there are lots of them out there. Really, that any card from the era commands that much is kind of amazing. It’s only because it’s Griffey. 

“A mass-produced card selling for two grand, that’s ridiculous,” Cracknell said. 

Thing is, getting a Griffey to grade a 10 isn’t impossible, but it’s not easy, either. PSA and Beckett are the two primary grading companies (though SGC is making a charge), so let’s look at what they call the population reports. 

PSA has graded 97,799 copies of the 1989 Upper Deck Griffey rookie. Only 4,083 cards have gotten a PSA 10 — that’s 4.2 percent, a really low number. Over at Beckett, the percentage is even lower. Of the 40,044 cards graded by that service, only 118 have gotten a 10 grade — 114 are a 10 Pristine, with four more checking in as 10 Black Label. That’s .003 percent. 

Why are those numbers so low? For those of us who grew up collecting in that era, that’s an easy question to answer. First, we didn’t typically use the penny sleeves with notches and premium top-loaders that are common now. We put cards in binders, with nine-pocket pages. Know how many corners were dinged going in and out? It’s sickening. Or the cards were put in screw-down cases, which we now know didn’t work well with the glossy coverings. 

Oops. 

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For as premium as the Upper Deck products were, the centering was an issue. It’s not that a lot of Griffey cards were wildly off-center, but most were off-center enough to drop a grade down to an 8 or 9, and that is reflected in pop reports. There are only 4,083 cards to receive a PSA 10 grade, but 29,551 to get a PSA 9 and 38,480 to get a PSA 8 grade. 

And, finally, being the No. 1 card in the set was an issue. On the printer sheet, the Griffey was in the upper left-hand corner, which meant potential dings. And, as the No. 1 card in the set, it was all the way up against the edge of the box in factory sets, so there was more of a chance of it being damaged than any other card, except the last one. 

One more note before we close out. Obviously, Upper Deck hit a home run choosing Griffey as the No. 1 card in its debut set. No doubt about that. But even with that huge vote of confidence, the company still underestimated him. Check out what’s written on the back of the card.

The son of major league veteran Ken Griffey, who is still active with the Reds, Ken Jr. is a rising star on the Seattle horizon, possibly the finest young talent the Mariners have ever produced. He will probably begin the ’89 campaign at Triple-A Calgary since his projected half-season at Double-A Vermont in 1988 was cut short by a back injury. M’s drafted him No. 1 in June ’87, out of Cincinnati’s famed Moeller HS, and 17-year-old Ken broke in with .320 and 14 HR at Bellingham that season. 

Griffey didn’t play a single game in the minors in 1989. He was well on his way to winning the AL Rookie of the Year award when he slipped in the shower and broke his hand in late July.

By that point, it didn’t matter to collectors. They were hooked on Griffey, and that’s a love affair that lasts to this day.

Ryan Fagan

Ryan Fagan Photo

Ryan Fagan, the national MLB writer for The Sporting News, has been a Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2016. He also dabbles in college hoops and other sports. And, yeah, he has way too many junk wax baseball cards.