In 1997 Griffey went off for a career year that won him the American League's MVP award unanimously, and with a season that included 56 HR and 147 RBI you can easily see why. Upper Deck ran with the achievement by creating an insert set for its 1998 flagship product that highlighted each and every moonshot. The 1:9 inserts were spread out between the two series with cards 1-30 available in Series I and 31-56 from Series II.
The silver foil fronts feature Griffey photos (with Series II's cards apparently including game-dated pics) along with a few other design elements. Upper Deck's trademark diamond logo sits in gold in the upper-left corner while the number of the dinger is in the upper-right and the Mariners logo takes the lower-right, also in gold foil. The right border of the card includes a stripe of outfield grass and warning track which is repeated on the upper border of the backs. A small black box near the bottom displays the set's name, then beneath that is a blurb briefly mentioning the date and situation where the home run was hit.
The backs from each series include an identical photo--Junior in a backwards hat in I and a posed shot in II--with more info on the home run in question. At the top the aforementioned grass/dirt stripe notes the Mariners' opponent for that game, and beneath the set's title once more, this time in green, the date appears as well. The series I cards' numbering goes up to 30 to make it easier to distinguish which one the cards hail from.
This is a set I compiled over the course of almost 15 years, having pulled some from the product not long after it came out, and ultimately completing a year or two ago thanks to COMC, eBay, and the like.
So here's all 56 cards in their foil-riffic, homer-happy glory. Space constraints don't allow me to scan them as large as I'd like, but you can always zoom in to make the text on the front and back more legible--hooray for Ctrl+Mouse Wheel Up!
Congrats on completing the set.Collecting Griffey Jr. Is a win win,although you may have to change the name of your blog to "Too Many Griffey,Jr. 's" now :)
ReplyDeleteThanks! Actually, I'm curious to see if I end up with more of Griffey or Ripken, and I think it might end up being the latter, though Griffey easily outpaces Cal in terms of cards from my completed sets.
DeleteI'm sure that looks great in a binder. What a fun set!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Matt! I bet it would but I don't actually keep anything in binders other than my 2002 and 2003 Topps Total sets. At least it looks nice in scans.
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