Griffey and Piazza

The first part of this post is the same as last Saturday. I just wanted to let everyone know why I collect 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.

Last week I showed my 1989 Upper Deck Griffey rookie card and today I'm going to show off my 1992 Bowman Mike Piazza rookie card. Piazza only has two actual rookie cards. This one and a 1992 Fleer Update rookie card. I don't have the Update card. It's a card that I would like to get someday. But I'm very happy to have his 1992 Bowman card.