Griffey and Piazza

In 1990 I was 9 years old and had a very tough decision to make. I had been collecting baseball cards for two years but didn't have a favorite player. I remember narrowing it down to two players, Robin Ventura of the White Sox and Ken Griffey Jr. of the Mariners. After careful deliberation, I decided Griffey was my man. Over the next 10 years I picked up every Griffey card I could get my hands on that I could afford. My favorite team was the Dodgers because Arizona didn't have a team at the time and so in 1993 I started collecting cards of Mike Piazza, and he and Griffey became the focus of my card collection.

Game-used and autographed cards didn't hit the market until the late 1990's and when they first came out they were extremely pricey, especially for a kid in high school. I took a two year break from card collecting from the middle of 2000 to the middle of 2002. When I returned to collecting there were Griffey and Piazza game-used and autographs available, but these were two popular players that still commanded a fair amount of money for memorabilia and autographed cards and I was a broke college kid trying to figure out what I was going to do with the rest of my life. I did pick up a few higher end Griffey and Piazza cards, but then I stopped collecting again for a while when I got married and we started having kids. I would pick up a few cards here and there but it wasn't like before.

In 2008 I started collecting again at a serious level, but by then Piazza had retired and Griffey was just heading back to Seattle to finish up his career. I still have my Griffey and Piazza collections, but I have never really showcased them on my blog before. One of my 2012 Card Collecting Goals was to organize my collection. I've been sorting through box after box of cards over the past several months and have come across my Griffey and Piazza collections and have pulled out any Griffey and Piazza cards that I've gotten over the past 4 years.

On Saturdays I'm going to start showing off my Griffey and Piazza collections on my blog.

It took me over 10 years before I was able to pick up the coveted 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card. I got this one from my LCS back in late 1999 or early 2000 and if I remember right I paid $150 for it. To me the card looked perfect and I sent it off to get graded by Beckett. I was disappointed to have it come back an 8.5 at the time and 10 plus years later I am even more disappointed every time I look at it. I think I'm going to break it free and enjoy it in a magnetic going forward.