Nearly solely responsible for the explosion in "premium cards" in the early 1990s the most desirable card of the ever-popular Mariners and Reds Hall of Famer ushered in a new era in baseball card design that continues today. The rich saturated color photograph high-quality paper stock and clean design of the Upper Deck issue forced the company's competitors to improve their product quality and add interesting inserts and parallel cards to their sets. Despite the fact that all the major card manufacturers produced cards of Griffey in their 1989 sets it was the Upper Deck #1 card - the first card in that company's first baseball set - that became known as Griffey's primary rookie card. This example is perfect sharp and clean with wonderful centering one of the most desirable baseball cards of the last 50 years.