1989 Upper Deck ALL Griffey cards uncut sheet
jsanz
Posts: 250 ✭✭
The existence of a full sheet of 89 UD Griffey rookies has been urban legend, folklore, or maybe reality, since I can remember. I am wondering has anyone here seen one in person? Does anyone remember one being offered for sale anywhere? Does anyone have a picture of one? It was in the book Card Sharks (about the UD story) and was referred to as kind of a joke (if I recall) but never really confirmed. I look online and on ebay from time to time and I have never found one. I think it would be an amazing piece to have framed. Does anybody have any proof that these existed?
Love those 70's - early 80's packs and boxes...send me a message if you are selling because I am buying
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I have heard about it, but never actually seen one. Urban Legend? If one actually existed, you would think it would have shown up over the last 30 years.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
I agree we should have scene one somewhere. Upper Deck was shady with the French Hockey fiasco so it would not shock me if they printed sheets of only Griffey cards - but I agree there should be definitive proof somewhere by now.
Were upper deck cards printed with plates? If so wouldn’t there be subtle differences between cards if that were the case? Smart people on this board were able to figure out how the Thomas NNOF was created. I would think someone would be able to show something that indicates differences if the legend were true. No idea what their printing process was and this is an area I have Zero understanding.
I have never seen one. I think @magicpapa is hiding all of them.
Nic
Guides Authored - Graded Card Scanning Guide PDF | History of the PSA Label PDF
The only 132 card sheet with only one card repeated on it that I’ve ever seen is the ‘89 Fleer corrected Bill Ripken card (I own one).
IMF
Saw a full one at the National in Anaheim back in the mid 90's. And have seen partial sheets on a few occasions.
I would think that it would have been hard for many of those sheets to have survived from being chopped up between 1989 and the MLB strike in 1994. The cut up value to unsuspecting buyers during that time would have been ridiculous. It would have been like printing $100 bills.
Even now, if that was a collectible made available on the open market, what kind of price do you think would be attached to it considering the player and that there's 132 of him, the significance of the individual card and the existence of the sheet as part of the collecting narrative from the wild west junk era, and the actual rarity of the item itself? $10,000? $25,000? $100,000? Waaay more than that?
My question.
Why would UD have a need for such a sheet?
I'm a big fan of urban legends and folklore.
Sorta like the hunt for Big Foot and the Abominable Snow Man?
It's my understanding that the sheet was something they did in 1989. I don't believe it was intended to be anything nefarious and I've never heard that it was a case of them letting the presses run for years. As someone mentioned, they would almost certainly get cut as soon as they were printed. What would be the point in printing them if you weren't going to cut them?
Arthur
A few of these posts made me think of the book Card Sharks, about the Upper Deck story and how Richard McWilliam the owner/CEO of the company had his own personal vault and nobody was really sure what was in it. It would not surprise me if he had some made to stash away. There were some shady things going on at UD according to the book. The all Griffey sheets were mentioned in the book as a joke between McWilliam and an employee. I would love to at least see a real picture of one.
Back in the early 1990s and at the Frank and Son Show, I recall a dealer with stacks of 1989 UD Griffeys. At least in the 100-150 range. Yes, like printing money for UD.
Someone good at Photoshop should make a picture of one just to get things stirred up.
I was sort of expecting that already.
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Wow that is some really cool sheet that you have
While I have no knowledge of this sheet, I do have some interesting knowledge of 1989 Upper Deck.
When it came out, I was working for a very large card shop in the Phoenix area. I will not name it or any individual, but, collectors in the area at the time will figure out which shop I am talking about.
The owner of this store didn't know the first thing about sports cards, but was a genius at marketing and business. He also had millions of dollars. He was from CA and somehow knew all the folks that wanted to start UD. Wally Joyner, DeWaine Buice, etc. He was offered the top job at UD first, but turned it down as he didn't want to move back to CA, and was semi-retired. IMO this turned out to be a bad career move. Of course McWilliams, whom he was friends with, got it.
The cards were released, and in addition to the large shop, he had a warehouse in the back where they made team sets for Walgreen's and places like that. They were shipped out nationwide. Some of you probably remember them. They came in a plastic snap box with the team name and "Team Set" printed in blue on the front. We made these sets for Topps, Donruss, Fleer, Score, and Upper Deck.
As you can imagine, an enormous number of cases were needed to make these sets. He had a couple dozen people working all the time ripping wax, sorting into teams, packing, and shipping.
At the time, all of the companies had minimum purchase requirements. Not the maximums nowadays, if you wanted to order direct. Topps was 100 cases of any of there stuff. Mix and match was okay, just 100 cases. Donruss and Fleer were somewhere in the 50-75 range. Score was like 50.
Upper Deck was different. They were different for everyone,for seemingly arbitrary reasons known only to them. We, because of connections and the team sets received the most in the country. 1000's of cases of baseball alone. I would estimate around 3000.
That was UD figured it would be more cost effective to make boxes similar to vending boxes for the production of the team sets. They came 500 cards to a plain white box sealed with a little Scotch tape. These boxes were all of one player. They charged my boss $.01 per card. No matter which player. Yep, even Junior. The catch was, we had to buy a box of every card in the set, including checklists. Whenever we needed more, we ordered what we needed. This went on for nearly a year. Every team was made except one after the first Beckett listing 89 UD. Seattle. The first Beckett is listing, iirc, had Junior at $5, the next $10, and he was at $25 within another two months I believe. When the first listing hit, the boss decided to hoard all the Griffey. He was convinced it would be $100 by the All-star break. I think it hit $60. Anyway, he order pallets full of these boxes. We had many 1000's of Griffeys. When it hit $25, he decided to "show his customers how much he appreciated them" and for a week he sold as many as two per customer for $10 each. We probably sold 10000. Whenever someone wanted some we got them from the warehouse so no one would see the pallet full of them we we're pulling from. It was genius. He made at least 100k profit in a week. He also handed out about a dozen of these "Griffey Bricks," as I call them, to friends and employees. It is likely from these that Buice was paying his bar tabs someone mentioned earlier. I met him and Joyner in store at least a dozen times. I was one of the folks whom he gave a brick to. I still have it in storage somewhere. When the hockey fiasco happened, it really soured me to UD, so I put it away, and haven't seen it in probably 20 years. I know in my gut these boxes were printed to order, but can not prove it. So, like the French Hockey, I personally consider them illegitamate, and have never sold any. Never even opened the box. I sometimes wonder how many PSA 10s may be in there. But, to this day, I have never personally submitted a card for grading to any company. I just purchased a Club Membership. I have been a collector for over 40 years, and have cards back to the 1880s, and many significant HoFers RCs and key cards. I was trading for T206s with a couple old neighbors back in the late 70s when I was about 10 years old. Didn't k know who anyone was, just thought they were cool. Carl Hubbell lived four houses down. He would sign stuff, and give me Wheaties boxes for cutting his grass. He was one of the first to appear on a box, and they sent him a couple cases every time they came out with a new one for the rest of his life. I have finally decided that I have too much that is too valuable not to start slabbing. I am not old, but my health is not good, and slabbing and selling could possibly support me for many years. So my first submission goes in next week. The highlight of it, for me, is my 1959 Fleer Ted Signs For '59 that I was finally able to get to finish my set.
I will not, however, ever submit an 89 UD card. I will buy a 10 Johnson. I know my boss put pallets full of stuff away thinking cards like the Griffey were gonna be the next 52 Mantle. He was convinced of it. He is now dead, but I would not be surprised if his children still have tons of this stuff socked away. Most of the bricks became worthless not long afterwards, and are probably rotting in storage somewhere.
Bottom line, these cards look and are cool, but by no means rare. I don't want to kill value to anyone else's cards, so I refuse to do anything with my brick in my lifetime. Like every card I have ever owned I just can't bring myself to throw, even these, away. Damaging a card intentionally,is like book burning to me.
Sorry for the crazy stupid long post, but it's been 30 years, and when I saw this post, I thought it's as good a time as any to tell this story. Somebody may even find it informative if I'm lucky.
I had heard the "brick" story already at various times over the past 30 years, with roughly the same information. It may just be an urban legend being recycled, or it could be that even if the details are a little hazy, there actually were full storage boxes of just the Griffey cards shipped to dealers with favored status, and many people were aware and involved with it. If there really were sheets of only Griffey cards being printed, shipping boxes full of just Griffey would be the next logical step, especially considering the explosion in popularity of that card almost immediately upon Griffey making the team and hitting the MLB scene that year.
I just watched "Jack of All Trades" on Netflix and the guy digs into the UD story and the 1989 cards. There are too many people that think the 1989 UD Griffey sheets existed to be an urban legend. Are they still around now? Who knows. I bet they existed at one time and were cut up. Like they say in the book, back then it was like printing $20, $50, $100 bills. The owner of UD back then was very secretive and known to have a secret stash of products.
I worked at a printed circuit board shop for 24 years. The process has some similarities to printing baseball cards. Some of the circuit boards (called cards!) were the size of baseball cards, or smaller, and were printed on panels with multiple images, like a sheet of cards, but all the same "card".
It would not be hard to print an image used on one sheet onto another without any differences.
Thanks for the great post! Very interesting information.
When I read "we had to buy a box of every card in the set, including checklists." I got the feeling that UD probably didn't produce entire Griffey sheets. If they produced individual sheets for players, I would think they would NOT force you to buy one box of each card. They were probably cutting the sheets themselves, or hired someone locally to do it for them, It would be MUCH cheaper to sell the cards that way than to have to collate and package them.
Of course the owner of UD (or any number of managers involved in the printing process) could have easily printed up a sheet with any number of players on it.
Anyone who has ever been to a "National" card convention knows that there are MILLIONS of trading cards that Mom didn't throw out! Try not to be too troubled about the mass production that went on, anyone producing something that sells like that is going to "run the presses" all day every day to try to keep up with demand.
A lot of stuff went out the "back door" of Topps never to be sold to the public, that are now in peoples collections.
I would LOVE to see a picture of your Griffey "brick", PLEASE share it here!!
Good luck on your "Ted Signs" card! I would love to see a scan of that as well!
Interesting thread, I would like to see a Griffey sheet if there is one.
I worked in a card shop throughout the 90s in Los Angeles and I can verify that over the last part of the decade, on a few occasions, customers would come in with 100ct and 200ct (or larger) boxes of the Griffey RC. We were in awe.
I think you could buy lots of individual players in the 1980's from offers in comic books.
One person having a bunch must mean they made them by the sheet 🤦♂️
Joe. I agree with your statement, it makes sense. I am starting to think the Griffey sheets might have been for just the owners or a select few people. If they ever existed.
"When I read "we had to buy a box of every card in the set, including checklists." I got the feeling that UD probably didn't produce entire Griffey sheets. If they produced individual sheets for players, I would think they would NOT force you to buy one box of each card. They were probably cutting the sheets themselves, or hired someone locally to do it for them, It would be MUCH cheaper to sell the cards that way than to have to collate and package them."
They could have run extra sheets with the Griffey, cut them, and dumped (sold very cheap) the rest of the cards since they had little or no value. I guess back then everything had some value. It's just fun the speculate.
You really have a chip on your shoulder about this long running rumor. Genuinely curious why the possibility of a full sheet rankles you so.
Have you read card sharks? Were you active in the hobby during the early and mid 90s? Do you recall the French hockey shenanigans?
And for the record, I am neutral on it existening. Seems likely given their business practices but also, nobody can supply an image, so...
My experiences with customers bringing in 100, 200 ct boxes always had them sharp and raw (no penny sleeves, no card savers, etc) in the box (plastic and cardboard) and always freshly cut in appearance (little white bits of paper on/in them and the boxes). They weren’t of varying centering and corner damage. When asked about the source it was always “a buddy of mine...” etc etc. and the general consensus at the time was that these were not obtained through appropriate hobby channels. Not that it bothered anyone much.
Did anyone else on the board attend the shows at Taylor Gibraltar show in the 1990's glory years?
I do remember a stack of 1989 UD Griffeys showing up occasionally during the weekends. The show was so big at the time that it didn't really raise my suspicion. There were so many card dealer there, it was like mini-National. It wasn't that strange to see stacks of the same rookie cards.
I don’t think any uncut sheets ever made it out the back door. But I do believe stacks were printed AFTER 1989 when the price was around $50 a piece. Grading was just taking off and raw centered Griffey’s were all the rage. My wife at the time purchased a dead centered one for my birthday in 1990.
"I spent 50% of my money on alcohol, women, and gambling. The other half I wasted.
The ability to purchase individually collated "bricks" of 1989 UD sets is true. It wasn't $0.01 per card, however. At least not for me when I spoke with them. That obviously would be a ridiculous deal - $8.00 per set. I recall the price being close/equal to what they charged for factory sets.
Several uncut sheets of varying types were taken "from the dumpster" so to say. There are countless printer's waste cards with double printed fronts, backs, black and white only, upside down print, etc etc available on ebay and most definitely cut from sheets.
Wow, interesting stuff!
Ok lets if i can keep this short, and i'll be back tomorrow.
I was a pressman for said card company. First: Nothing left our building ! I'll say it again, Nothing left our building.
Printing process in 1989 was with plates. Ink: Blk, Cyn, Mag, and Yellow with UV coating done at other facility.
After the printing process, all sheets had to be what we call dusted. Running the printed sheet through the press with
impression activated with 2 cylinders bumping the sheet to remove the power which was dispersed during the printed run,
as to separate each sheet.
One person tryed to sell a sheet and was removed from the building, and said sheet was recovered.
Reminds me of the famous Roger Patterson footage of a bigfoot filmed walking through Bluff Creek in 1967.
I bought several sets in the fall of 1990. I opened two and one had
fifty Griffey's in it . The other set had two of two different sheets,
no Griffey's. I opened the other sets and they were OK. Same experience
with Topps factory sets from J.C. Penny in the mid 80's.
Total click bait title, OP!!
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Looking for a new challenge after mastering trimming - Moser is perfecting gluing. He is experimenting with Elmer’s, rubber cement and is particularly enjoying airplane glue. One brick of Griffey rookies a little ingenuity and one all Griffey sheet coming up. Expect to see it displayed at PWCC’s booth at The National as part of the highlight of their next auction.
One explanation I heard years back, was that the Griffey's in Factory Sets (being card #1) was rubbed/pressed against the dark purple flap inside the factory set box, and thus, customers were complaining. Thus, UD printed the Griffey's as replacement for customers. Since then, every factory set I've opened have the first 100 cards or so flipped backward, so that the Griffey is no longer the first card facing the inside cardboard flap.
I will doubt it until the day I see one. The odds of something existing from that time period and no image of it existing today are slim.
Arthur
Interesting.
Anyone here have a bad Griffey from a factory set they returned?
How many people broke open factory sets?
Here's a snippet from BaseballCardPedia:
The card was situated in the top left hand corner of the uncut sheets and was more liable to be cut poorly or have its corners dinged. Company policy was that if a customer found a damaged card in its package, the company would replace it. Many Griffey cards were returned and the result was that Upper Deck printed many uncut sheets (sheets consisting of 100 cards) of just Ken Griffey, Jr.
Seems very possible. Now all we need is a picture of one!
More pictures exist of the Loch Ness monster than the uncut griffey sheet. That should tell you how mythical it is. Its one of those bigfoot urban legends. You hear about it, but you never see it.
If anyone is still monitoring this, my family had a card shop in the late 80's early 90's, my father recently passed and we found in storage the complete set of uncut sheets framed and in boxes. I had forgotten about these, but I do remember that we couldn't display them in the shop or risk bringing them to a show because upper deck was confiscating them since they left the factory under questionable circumstances.
How about a picture of said sheet.
This site says:
"It is the "'52 Mantle" of the post-vintage era."
Which makes me laugh.
When that 89 UD Griffey Jr was printed I believe it was the highest production baseball card ever made. It may have been surpassed now. But, it may not have.
Until I see a picture of an all Griffey sheet I will not believe the urban legend. Somebody would have one if they existed - 1989 was the hobby peak. UD executives would have hung them on their wall and somebody would have snuck them out the back door. No way Don West would have missed out on getting a stack of uncut Griffey sheets - how many times could he have said rookie card while hawking them?
You lucky duck!
To everyone else that's posted thank you, great read!
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