Why Ken Griffey Jr. rookie cards in bad condition can command premium prices

Sports card collectors normally chase the highest graded examples of the card they’re seeking, and they pay a pretty penny for the privilege. But there’s a subset of the community that is chasing the lowest graded cards — the ones in the worst condition. And they’re willing to pay massive premiums to get them.

What is happening with these Bizarro collectors, where “Poor” condition is more valuable than “Mint,” where up is down, black is white. Are they looking at cards through a display case or through the looking glass? 

Let’s examine a recent example of this phenomenon. A PSA 1 (Poor) rookie Score Barry Sanders #257 sold in June for $208.05 in an auction, according to CardLadder, an app that tracks sales and card populations. That’s 66 percent more than the last sale of a PSA 9 ($124.99). Remember, these are auctions, meaning someone else bid just below that $208.05. Did that auction just have two crazy people who were blindly chasing a card irrationally?

No. And they are not alone. One of the things people are doing with cards from the ‘80s and ‘90s of iconic athletes, cards that aren’t that expensive in higher grades, is getting the “grading rainbow.” That means one example of the card in a sealed case from the same grader in every grade: 1, 2, 3, etc. all the way to 10. The challenge is that the cards in lower grades have low populations, because few collectors have traditionally bothered to grade obviously poorer condition samples. For example, CardLadder says that there are 12,969 PSA 9s of the Sanders card vs. just nine PSA 1s. So it’s supply and demand. 

At the National Sports Card Convention in Chicago, The Athletic found a dealer who specializes in Ken Griffey Jr. cards, the “Griffey Guy,” Matt Canaday of Arkansas-based GG2 Sportscards. He had rows of Griffey cards of the same type with all the grades in order. “I’ve had a lot of questions about it from attendees so that’s why I laid the full rainbow out in my case.”

Canaday says it’s very difficult for him to get the cards in lower grades. “I search (social media) for people that either have the (lower-graded) cards they want to sell or somebody’s looking to complete the run. I’ve already sold a PSA 1 (at the show). The 1s, 2s and 3s (condition Poor to Very Good on the 10-grade scale) go for premiums because the populations are so low. Once you get to 4s and up, it levels out.” By that, Canaday means that the card prices reflect traditional market dynamics — higher grades bringing higher prices.

What’s strange about this demand for low-grade cards is that populations in higher grades are limited by their condition. In other words, they can’t get any better. But every card that’s in better condition than the lowest-graded ones can be cracked out of the case and purposely damaged in a manner that should earn a low grade. In theory, every single graded Sanders card can be worn and damaged into a PSA 1. 

But in practice, Canaday says this is much more difficult for collectors to achieve. It turns out the grading companies can tell the difference between natural and purposeful wear.

“I’ve heard of people throwing them in, you know, washers and dryers and just beating them up however they can — running the card over with a car,” Canaday laughed. “But (the grading company) will either send it back not graded or with no number grade, as merely ‘authentic.’ Meaning it’s a real card, but they can’t grade it because it’s beat up too much.” 

One of Canaday’s display cases at The National. (Photo: Michael Salfino)

It turns out altering a card for a worse grade is no different than altering a card for a better one.

This grading rainbow is limited mostly to late ’80s and early ’90s cards because the 10s are not that much money. For example, the Sanders rookie in perfect condition is about $1,500. While the Griffey rookie (1989 Upper Deck) goes for three times that in perfect condition, a Mint 9 is just $250 and then all the other grades can be acquired for about $100 on average until you get down to the lower grades. A Griffey rookie in a PSA 3 is $180, or 26 percent more than a PSA 8; a PSA 2 ($450, 80 percent more than a PSA 9). There’s no recent sales data on a PSA 1, according to CardLadder, but 1s are more rare (165 graded samples) than 2s (208).

Canaday says the rainbow is not limited to PSA (Professional Sports Authenticator), the largest grading company, and collectors can seek it from the other major graders — Beckett, SGC, CGS. “But the key is that the entire rainbow has to be graded by the same grader.”

So for well under $10,000, a collector could get something pretty unique with iconic modern-era stars like Griffey and Sanders — a complete run of their rookie card in every grade. And it doesn’t stop there. Players like Cal Ripken Jr. (Gem Mint rookie card costs about $2,000) and Mike Piazza (eight rookie card types ranging in price from $100 to $2,500), to name just a couple of Hall of Famers, can have their graded rainbow completed for comparable prices. 

Has this niche of the hobby jumped the shark with grading or have they found a new, creative way to collect? 

“Collecting a rainbow of graded slabs is a unique method of ‘super-collecting,’” says New Jersey collector and dealer Juho Wang, who perused the Griffey graded run at The National in Chicago. “In one sense, attaining such a rainbow can be one of a kind. However, does it make sense to pay $175 for a PSA 1 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr.?  Personally, I feel this is a temporary product of low supply, high niche based demand.”

Traditional collectors remain confused by the desirability of low-graded cards vs. higher graded ones of the same type.

“I find them hilarious,” said SquishfulThoughts on Reddit of the premium paid for low-graded/low population cards. “It’s like the card earning an award for getting its figurative ass kicked.”

Zorloth on the EliteForum, where TCG (trading card game) cards are experiencing the same low-grade premiums, questions the meaningfulness of population reports of low-graded cards. “They should really consider the PSA 1 pop of a given card as equal to the entire (graded) population of that card.”

In other words, it’s not how many cards are available in the grade, but how many are equal to or better than that graded one that really matters.

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(Top photo: Michael Salfino)