I Love the 90's

As I mentioned in my first "I Love the 90's" post, my parents got me started on baseball cards by buying me a couple packs of 1996 Collector's Choice. As such I was very loyal to that set for the duration of it's existence. I would save all of my allowance money and every couple weeks we would go into town for my sister's piano lessons. After her lessons she and my mom would go into the local Hallmark store to peruse the birthday cards, knick knacks and what nots that you find in such a store. It was located on main street of the town and the LCS just happened to be a couple stores down. So of course that's where I headed. Ray, the guy who owned the LCS, always kept the boxes on top of the counter. No worries about pack searchers back then. (Thanks Ray!) Every time I was in there I would spend 45 minutes to an hour carefully going over the inserts odds on the backs of the packs trying to decide what to spend hard earned money on from cleaning the bathroom and washing the dishes. Well like I said before, I was very loyal to Collector's Choice. With the huge base set I could generally land a lot of new cards every time without too many duplicates. In 1997 one of the inserts in Collector's Choice became my "ultimate chase card". That insert was the "rare" set titled "Ken Griffey Jr. : Clearly Dominant". The five card set was inserted at 1 in every 144 packs. I know, that doesn't sound all that spectacular. But to me it was. With Collector's Choice I was used to the only inserts being silver signature parallels in every pack and the odd gold signature every now and then. So the idea of pulling one of the Griffey's was distant.

Well there was one day where I bought some packs then went over to Hallmark to sit on the floor and rip while my mom looked at birthday cards.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

When I pulled this card I think I scared some elderly ladies that were looking at Christmas ornaments because I yelped and ran to show the card to my mom. 

If I remember correctly I believe this card was valued around $120 by Beckett back then. Now it goes for less than $5 on COMC. Like the great Billy Joel said, "And so it goes.."

Still one of my absolute favorite collecting memories.