It was the year 1988. The sports chromos industry was booming, led by Topps, Donruss and Fleer. A new company called Score had just released its first important collection, and a new brand called UPPER Deck – thus called both by the upper seats of the stadiums and for the company’s objective to be the best “Baraja” in the world of the chromos – prepared for its launch in 1989.
Upper Deck wanted to be different. Although many of the designs of baseball cards until that moment would be iconic, the cards themselves were not yet the elegant and visceral experience in which they would become later years.
Therefore, part of the Upper Deck mission was to try new things. More daring photographs. More elegant containers. Unique approaches for the material and brightness of your cards. More scarce amounts than the immense number of copies that the competition launched during the call era of “garbage wax.”
Is it also on the Upper Deck pending tasks list? Include a rookie letter at number 1 on the list of your first collection.
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It was a risk. Often, the letter number 1 of previous series was an established veteran. What happens if this rookie never worked? It could potentially stain the new brand forever.
Even so, the bold decision was made. As 1988 progressed, a young Upper Deck employee named Tom Geideman was responsible for making the preliminary control list for the 1989 initial collection, including the search for the appropriate prospect to present it as the first letter in the brand’s history.
And that is where Baseball America comes into play.
To help him make his decisions, Geideman broke a copy of the printed magazine BA. He took a list of our four best prospects at that time: Gregg Jefferies, Gary Sheffield, Sandy Alomar Jr. and Ken Griffey Jr.
It was a great event for Baseball America. At the end of the 80s, prospecting was not yet something common. Although BA is a reference in the prospect industry, the publication was only eight years old at that time. Even so, it was a valuable resource for Geideman, since he was helping to shape the future of Upper Deck.
In 1988, Jefferies had already been a player of the year of the lower leagues of the BA, and his 88 cards were heating the market. Alomar and Sheffield were also talented prospects that would have outstanding races in the big leagues. But according to the story, Geideman – Nattle and fan of the Mariners – took a calculated risk and decided on Griffey Jr. who, at that time, did not even have guaranteed a place on the list of the inaugural day.
The rest, as they say, is history. Griffey, of course, ended up being part of the Seattle inaugural list in 1989 and came to have a race in the Hall of Fame. The card, in which Griffey wore an old blue and yellow cap of the sailors and a necklace, became an icon and helped to launch Upper Deck instantly as a key player in the card collecting space. He also worked to Geideman, who continued his successful career in the world of collectibles.
Three more information about the Upper Deck Griffey card:
1. Yes, it is true, the Griffey cap that appears in the photo was altered for the card. In the original photo, Griffey wore a Single-A San Bernardino Spirit cap. It was changed to a sailor cap for launch.
2. As the Giffey card was number 1 of the series, many copies were damaged during production due to its placement on the card leaves. Therefore, Upper Deck had to print thousands of extra copies to send them in exchange for damaged damaged cards. Even during the era of the “garbage wax” of baseball cards, when Upper Deck strategically tried not to overcome their cards, the numbers of this famous card remain the best of all.
3. Despite overproduction, Griffey’s rookie card is still greatly popular in the card market until today. A popular trend among collectors is to try to “collect the rainbow of Griffey.” While “collecting the rainbow” usually means collecting all parallel colors of a letter – something not applicable to a 1989 set – in this case, refers to collecting 10 versions of the Griffey Charter, each classified from PSA 1 to PSA 10.
The book “Mint Condition: How Baseball Cards Became an American Obsession“, by Dave Jamieson, by the information contained in this article.
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