Griffey rookie card bubble bursts following historic sale
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Throughout the month of October, Collectibles on SI provided consistent coverage of the rapid and seemingly inexplicable rise of the 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey rookie card as it shot past the $4000 mark and ultimately reached G5K (Griffey $5000) status with a $5300 sale on October 26.
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As noted previously, that October high came with questionable staying power as it was not only a good $500 above comps but also several hundred dollars higher than multiple "Buy It Now" listings available before, during, and after the sale. To put it in layperson's terms, the card's final price tag made no sense.
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Still, baseball card collectors have been known to do crazy things, and in the attention economy it's not nothing to be the buyer of a highly publicized $5000 Griffey. Plus, it was certainly easy to conceive of a world where one G5K sale triggered a rash of others to the point that the $5300 price tag might soon look cheap. As it turns out, the sale may well have had the opposite effect. Not only didn't the next sale top $5000; it didn't even top $4000!
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Since that time, the Hobby sales tracking site Card Ladder has registered twelve additional sales of the Upper Deck Griffey in PSA 10. Prices on the dozen ranged from low of $4000 to a high of $4699 with an average of $4443. Obviously, these are still sky-high prices for what was a $2000 card only a year ago. Still, they equally suggest that G5K was less an era than an aberration, at least for now.
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.