1990's Insert Set Review: 1997 Upper Deck Game Jersey

Welcome back to Cards and Comics, guys. Today I have another 90s insert set review. We're going to do one of the big ones, and I own all the cards in it. Um, so it's definitely, I think, top five for the 90s, and it's the 97 Upper Deck game jersey set. Now, this card, this set is dominated by one card, the King Griffy Jr. card, and that card uh to Griffy collectors is considered to be a Grail type card. Uh it's gone up tremendously in value. In fact, uh I would say most people would consider it a top 10 Griffy card. And [snorts] the set itself is um probably, you know, I I definitely think it's one of the top five insert sets ever made in the 90s. So, let's get into how it was released, some of the mysteries around the set, and uh [snorts] go into the rating itself. So, the set was issued in uh series 1, and um it was one in 800 packs. So, you know, you're talking like um one in 34 boxes or um you know, like one every three cases you would get one of these cards. [snorts] Uh so that's pretty rare. And you know, at the time when Rarity was just really ranching, you know, ratcheting up, you know, 97 finest uh was a good set for Rarity. So you had uh much more rare inserts and sets were being produced. [snorts] The biggest mystery around the set and there's only three cards in the set to begin with. And I think the biggest question is why isn't there a series two, right? You did three cards in series one and then that that's it. No series two. [snorts] A lot of collectors even back in 97. I remember I remember when this came out. I everyone was expecting series 2 have Frank Thomas, Barry Bonds, [snorts] uh A-Rod, uh Cal Ripken, like Nolan Ryan. I mean, we we just thought that that was going to be the natural thing, you know, like there would be a series two and there and there wasn't. So, my take after going to message boards, just, you know, reading as much I could about the set and just seeing other collector's opinions is this. [snorts] They made it for series one because they had a lot of time um or extra time for series one. The cards are all pretty much made by hand um because there's no real automated way to to do that. And if you ever watch a video on how uh these cards are made, even today they're pretty much made by hand. And so, and this was kind of the first time it's ever really been done and and especially in baseball cards. I believe the [snorts] football set was issued earlier, but still there was no like it was really new on how to do this, right? No one had really perfected this method of manufacturing. I do think they didn't issue a series 2 for two reasons. One, they didn't want to delay series 2 because the manufacturing process is so hard uh for these kind of product, this kind of card. And I don't think they really knew how collectors would react uh to this card. Like let's say it was a dud. No one really cared and then they spent all this money and time to [snorts] buy the materials to manufacture it. And I do think also it was just more labor intensive and costly than they were really ready to kind of figure out at the time. So I think they were really like hey let's just wait and see and uh let's just do one series 1 and if it does well we'll add it to other products but you know let's not delay series 2. That's sort of my opinion is why we only have a series 1. [snorts] Um but I do feel like that's a huge missed opportunity. Now, back in 2004, I believe around that time period, Upper Deck did do a tribute set where car where players like Frank Thomas was issued a card in the the exact same style uh of 97. So, I think that's cool um to go back to collect those cards because that gives you kind of like more of that set that no one ever got. And I do feel like that's a huge hobby missed opportunity is to have more players in this set. So, it's only a three card set. So, I'll go to the ratings here before I [snorts] show the set or I just talk about the set a little bit. It's it's very small set, three cards, uh with two of the cards being Hall of Famers. Um, and we mentioned before the King Griffy Jr. card. So, here is the Griffy card. Um, now when I first collected this card or when I was out to to get this card, um, I always thought there was, you know, a white jersey and a and a till jersey version of this card. In the recent years, I'm not seeing very many of the white jersey cards if and now I'm starting to to doubt whether or not the white jersey cards actually exist. Um, because every card I've seen recently in the last couple years has been teal. Um, here is the back. It's an interesting back because it does have the congratulations. You have received one of the first ever [snorts] game worn jersey baseball cards from reproduct company. On the front of this card is an authentic piece of gameworn jersey from an unofficial 96 baseball game. This swatch is from a jersey King Griffy Jr. worn by King Griffy Jr. We hope you enjoy this and this is as close as you can get. Blah blah blah. Right. So, there's a lot of guarantees on this card. There's a lot of hype around this card in [snorts] terms of like, you know, what it is and and and a lot of assurances this is real, right? We don't have that today. Now it's like player worn and it's just a bunch of BS. The first the first game jersey cards were definitely uh game jersey cards, game worn cards. And um that's why, you know, today they're worth I think so much more money just besides the design. We'll talk about the design in a minute, but just the fact they are real. So, there is the King Griffy Jr. [snorts] show the GL. Uh, next up is Tony Gwen. And I'm I'm happy Tony Gwen's in the set. I will never complain about it. But again, there were other players in this that could have filled the slot three. So, slot two, I'm okay with Tony Gwen. No problems with Tony Gwen being in slot two. Very cool card. Great Hall of Famer. So, slot two. Slot three is where we have a little bit of an issue, right? So, we have Ray Ordonius. And this, I think, is cracked up. Like, why is he in the set? Well, he was very good for a brief period of time. He had one of those like really short five-year type careers where he was really amazing and then you know kind of just um you know tapered off and I think he fall fell into a lot of the traps that a lot of upper deck and just 90s products have and that is um they felt like you had to have a young player or rookie in everything. [snorts] So, if you did an insert set, it's a classic 90s insert set would be like, you know, 10 cards and eight of them are veterans and two of them are Travis Lee and Ben Grieve or Joseé Cruz Jr. because they or Darren [clears throat] Urstad or, you know, like they had to have like younger players like um you know, um you know, some of them were good like you had Andrew Jones, Vlad Jr., But again, a lot of them were like rookie of the year type contenders they would put into these standard insert sets. And I think the actual they did with Rayod Dornius. He's sort of a younger player who was hot at the time this card was made from a, you know, from New York. So again, like would we all be happier if this was Don Maddingley or even Tino Martinez or something like that? Uh or I mean think about if it's Greg Maddox or you know even there's a lot of players you could put in place of him. Frank Thomas Bry Bonds would be you know huge choices but I do understand they were trying to to to get a younger player because the rookie card phenomenon was driving you know inserts had just started to really become a driving force but still rookies were a big deal. So, I do feel like they try to like skate the middle and say, "Let's add a really cool young player uh as long and and and have like, you know, two vets." So, I think they were playing it safe by including, you know, him. But in hindsight, it was a kind of a wasted slot of a player [snorts] um compared to who they could have had in slot three. So, that's a set. So, let's talk about the actual design here. So, when I got the card for the first time, so the first card I ever bought was this Griffy Jr. card. Um, I was shocked by a couple things. One is how thin the cards are. So, this is a 35point holder. And I don't know if you can see the card very well, but it I mean, you could probably get away with a 25 point holder for this card. It's very thin. Very thin card. It bulges a little bit in the middle. I don't know if you can see that little bit of a bulge. Um, so that makes the card um actually, you know, you don't have to have special holders for the most part. Um, you know, like I said, you could have a 35 to 55 point, you know, uh, holder and works perfectly. Um, but just the design itself, the whole like uh pin striping, the the black with the uh gold, the uh you ga stamp here. I mean, all that's class. That's that's that is things that they normally don't do later on, right? [snorts] Later on, we get game jersey cards, you know, they're just the swatch and a background a lot of times, you know, no extra, you know, foiling, no really thought on making the design really, really amazing. And let's just face it, this is probably one of those designs that's been repeated and people love this design for this set. Um, it just, you know, it's it's [snorts] classic. It's very iconic. It's hard to beat the aesthetic appeal of this card. So, you add the fact it's the first pack pulled baseball jersey card with, you know, the fact that it's got a great design and then you got one of the best players or, you know, uh, one of the top five BA baseball players of all time, you know, or the 90s, let's say, from the 90s, um, who's [snorts] super popular, like, you know, the number one popular player in the 90s is definitely Griffy. So, it just makes this card go up through the through the stratosphere in terms of value. The set itself, um, the Gwen and the Ordonz, you [snorts] know, don't command huge premiums. The Gwyn has started to go up a little bit in value, um, just because [snorts] people just like the design and he's a good player and he's a Hall of Famer. Um, but I don't know a lot of people who who just put the whole set together. There's three cards. So, kind of like when you get a Griffy, it's easy to put the set together. Um, from a um value perspective, um, the last couple Griffy sales, and again, there's no at the time I did this writing, there was no uh none of none of those cards available um for Griffy on eBay. So, you know, a lot of times when I talk about rarity, you can still go on eBay and buy the card. You may you may pay more than it's worth, but it's available. Well, this is a card that has very little availability. A lot of times, you know, in the last 10 years, they would come up for sale on eBay quite often. Um, but that's trickled down and now they it's such an expensive card, it's more of an auction card than a eBay card. [snorts] Um, but from a value perspective, RAW, the last sales of RAW, this card is bringing $4,000 raw. Um, I think that's just a tremendous uh, you know, increase in in value for this card. The last PSA7 brought 3,300. The last PSA 9 brought almost $7,000. So again, this card itself is probably around a four, you know, $4,000 card, [snorts] you know, $4,500 card and an eight. Um, the last Gwyn in a nine sold for $400. Sorry, I'm holding up the wrong card. But just shows you like there is some value. You know, $400 is nothing to sneeze at. But again, the Griffy is worth, you know, one and a half, you know, or 10 or 15 times that, you know, I guess something like that. Um, so it's just there is a huge factor there of difference in in value. [snorts] Now, if I go into, um, the next thing is, you know, um, the rarity side of it, again, super rare, one in three cases or one in 34 boxes. So, it's a one in 800 insert. Um, so from that perspective, you know, I I'm, you know, from a rating perspective, I'm giving it, you know, on the player selection, it's a small set. I'm giving it an eight. You could, you could argue it should be a six or a seven, but the fact that two of the three are pretty good Hall of Famers and one of them is iconic. I had a hard time saying, well, the set selection or the player selection was really bad. it has this card in it. That That's definitely >> [snorts] >> um if it didn't, that would be like could you imagine this having like, you know, just Gwyn being the best card. I mean, that would be the biggest opportunity missed in the history of the hobby. Um but set rarity, I mean, it's up there. I gave it a nine for rarity. There was uh like 97 finest and boss factors were rare, so there are cards that were issued rarer than this card. Um but it's still pretty rare. Uh, design-wise, it's just the best. I don't think you could improve on this design. I gave it a 10. Value-wise, I gave it a nine because it's just getting up there. Um, it's only nine because the other two cards in the set are kind of just okay in value comparatively. So, the Griffy really steals all the thunder in the set. There isn't a really a solid number two. like Gwyn's okay, but if like there was Thomas or Bonds, there would be like the set would be, you know, a lot stronger value-wise. But v bonus points, so um I gave it four bonus points, [snorts] um which, you know, u out of five, it's, you know, basically u iconic. Um it it only gets four because um if it would have been the first I think because football did it first, you know, I think it that would have gave it a five. Um but you could argue it's a five, you know, from a bonus because it's super rare. It's iconic and it was the first one ever done in baseball. But overall, I gave it, you know, 100 points out of a 100 uh with a bonus. um it kind of brings everything up to that 100 point level. [snorts] So it's as close to a perfect set as you can you can get. Um you know without the bonus points it it would have scored below 100. So I think it just because of all the iconic nature and just the fact this card itself is one of the you know hottest cards of the 90s right now that you would say like okay well it gets itself to that high score. So, I think it's definitely a set that once you get the Griffy, you can put it together. But it's getting harder and harder to get this card. And I think unfortunately for people who don't have it yet, who want to have [snorts] this uh game jersey card, um you're just going to have to plan to overspend. um right now with Griffy and just how the market is and this and this card is um it's going to out sell the last sold every time for a little bit longer until either more cards hit eBay or hit you know auctions to kind of tamp down the demand [snorts] um which I don't think is going to happen um or you know just the entire market tank so it's like the market isn't tanking right now for Griffy it's kind of going up This card is not very available and it's highly desirable. So, every time one comes up for auction or sell, it either brings exactly what the last one brought or in most cases 20 to 30% higher. And it's just where we're at right now. And this and a few cards of the Griffy just that's the the MMO over and over and over. So, unfortunately, um the prices I quoted you probably won't cover the next time they sell. They'll probably go higher. So, that's just how it's going. But, it's iconic. It's a beautiful set. Um, I love it. Um, it was one of the first Griffy cards when I got back into collecting Griffy that I targeted along with the 93 Refractor. I made sure I got those early in my collecting journey uh because I knew those would be the cards that, you know, most collectors would target and they were still affordable for me at that point. Uh today, this card would be difficult, very difficult for me to pick up without having to sell a bunch of my cards. Um you know, or or do something because it's just uh got more and more, you know, uh expensive as we've gone. So, uh but there it is, guys. 97 the entire set here. 97 um um game jersey, upper deck, all three cards. Unfortunately, that's all there is, but u there it is, guys. Just let me know what you think and uh I'll see you next time on Cards and Comics. Bye. [music] [singing]