1989 Upper Deck Griffey Card Sales Skyrocketed in 2025 but What's Next?
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With apologies to a certain Ripken brother, the 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr rookie card was the hottest card of 1989. It was also among the hottest cards of the 2020-2021 pandemic buying frenzy. And as 2025 draws to a close, the card is once again at or near the very top of the Hobby's hot list.
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Solid Start
Heading into 2025, the Griffey was not exactly cheap. PSA 10 (i.e., gem mint) examples of the card were selling on the regular for $2,500, which is already a staggering price point given that A) the card is not at all rare (Upper Deck even printed extras!), and B) nearly every copy pulled in 1989 went straight into a top loader or other protective case designed to preserve the card's pack fresh condition. Underscoring both these points, the PSA 10 population of the card sits well above 4000.
Still, if $2,500 seemed high for a card produced at the peak of the Junk Wax Era, its trajectory in 2025 made $2,500 or even $3,500 seem like a bargain. Come late November, the card regularly topped $5,000 and even today, despite some curious variability, appears to be holding steady very close to the $5K plateau.
Sudden Surge
In analyzing year-to-date sales, it's impossible not to notice one thing. Nearly all the card's growth occurred since June. In other words, five months into the year the Griffey was still a $2,500 card, and then something changed very quickly. Just six weeks later, sales at or above $4,000 were commonplace. While this sort of rapid rise has precedent in the Hobby, it is typically accompanied by some precipitating event such as the player's election to the Hall of Fame. In the case of Griffey, however, there did not appear to be any such driver.
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Secondary Spike
By October, the iconic Upper Deck rookie was topping $4,500 on occasion and at least flirting with the once impossible barrier known as G5K, or Griffey 5000. Then on October 26, the card didn't just hit $5,000 but blew past it, with a $5,300 auction result on eBay. Since that time, the Griffey has seen five more $5,000+ sales, including a high of $5,999 on November 27.
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Savage Slump?
As the calendar turns to 2026, the future of the Griffey appears particularly uncertain. Had the card simply experienced a modest but steady rise over the course of 2025, collectors might reasonably expect such a trend to continue. Of course, the card did anything but this in 2025! Rather, it literally doubled in value over the course of seven months, something practically unheard of for a 36-year-old piece of cardboard. Granted, almost nobody expects to see a repeat of that in 2026, so there would seem to be only two outcomes likely.
The first is that the Upper Deck Griffey holds the line at or right around the $5,000 mark, nudging upward or downward slowly and gently if at all. The other, which recent buyers of the card are bracing against, is that the card experiences a sudden crash. While the bottom falling out of the market for a card as iconic as the Upper Deck Griffey should be impossible, the truth is it already happened. What's more, the dollar amounts involved carry an eerie connection to those of 2025.
Entering 2021, the Upper Deck Griffey in PSA 10 was a solid $2,500 buy before its rapid ascent north of $5,000 to a highwater mark just shy of $6,000. Sound familiar yet? Just a few months later, the card not only fell back to $2,500 but below it! That said, a major difference between then and now was that the overall Hobby was in chaos back in 2021 whereas the most recent Griffey rise took place during a period of relative Hobby stability.
In the end, collectors wondering about the future of the Griffey market may want to look outside the Hobby to the poet Maya Angelou. Her words seem as good as any for what 2026 may bring: "Hoping for the best, prepared for the worst, and unsurprised by anything in between." Then again, isn't that the Hobby pretty much every day?
Jason A. Schwartz is a collectibles expert whose work can be found regularly at SABR Baseball Cards, Hobby News Daily, and 1939Bruins.com. His collection of Hank Aaron baseball cards and memorabilia is currently on exhibit at the Atlanta History Center, and his collectibles-themed artwork is on display at the Honus Wagner Museum and PNC Park.