If you haven’t used the Hobby for a while, prepare to be shocked. That Upper Deck Griffey card you drew as a kid, the one you might remember was worth around $30, just passed the $5,000 mark. The sale took place on eBay via an auction which concluded on October 26, 2025. The final hammer price? A mind-boggling $5,300, which makes it official. The Hobby has entered its G5K era (Griffey $5,000).
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Before you go hunting for shoe boxes in your closet, you need to add a very important qualifier. This wasn’t just any Upper Deck Ken Griffey card from 1989. Rather, it was a mint considered valuable by third-party grading company PSA. While such a distinction is highly valued, it may not be as rare as one might imagine. In fact, PSA has given the Griffey its coveted 10 rating over 4,000 times!
Still, even if you slide your Griffey straight from the package into a screw-down protective case, chances are it won’t be a “jewel.” In fact, for every Griffey PSA 10, there are approximately eight that receive a rating of 9 (“Mint”) and ten that receive a rating of 8 (“Near Mint to Mint”). Such classification distinctions are usually not obvious at first glance, but require careful inspection of each card under magnification.
Either way, now that G5K is here, the question is: “Will it last?” » Although there is no way to know for sure, three measurements can offer some guidance. The first of these concerns recent sales, the equivalent of Hobby “comps”. As the Griffey only broke the $5,000 barrier this evening, there are clearly no recent comps above $5,000. The real question is whether there are projects that are at least roughly approximate. The answer here is no, not really. According to sales tracking site Card Ladder, the $5,300 price was more than $700 higher than a sale of $4,535 the day before and more than $600 higher than any other recent sale.
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Still, that doesn’t mean G5K was a one-time fluke. While past comparisons offer the most reliable estimates of value, active auctions, at least in theory, can offer insight into what’s next. However, there are currently only two PSA 10 Griffey cards up for auction, and both have several days left. One is at $4,000 with a single offer, and the other is at $4,500 with no offer. Griffey collectors will no doubt look at these auctions as tests of the G5K’s strength.
A final indicator of where the card might be heading comes from looking at the cheapest available inventory on the market. Obviously, if there are Griffey cards priced below $5,000, the $5,300 sale should be considered an outlier, at least for now. And of course there is two The PSA 10 Griffey rookies are available for less than $5,000, although one of them is priced high, at least for U.S. buyers.
The other, however, is not just under $5,000, duty-free, but also open to best deals. Of course, don’t be surprised if one of these two sellers increases the price once they learn of the evening’s $5,300 sale. Whatever the future of Upper Deck Griffey, the $5,300 sale is significant. After all, just a month ago the card was over $4,000. At least under normal circumstances, such a rapid significant increase would require a triggering event like a 500th home run or a Hall of Fame induction. Aside from the Mariners almost reaching the World Series, it’s hard to say what such an event could be. Then again, how can you watch a baseball icon make such an awesome entrance and not want his rookie card?
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