One of the best Ken Griffey Jr. baseball cards sold for $280,600 on Friday night at Heritage Auctions, setting a record for any Griffey Jr. card sold at public auction.
The 1998 Skybox E-X 2001 Essential Credentials Now card, limited to only 10 numbered copies, is one of the rarest and most sought-after cards featuring “The Kid”.
The latest sale smashed the previous record, which was the $84,000 paid for a BGS 8.5 graded copy of the 1998 Upper Deck A Piece of the Action card, which features a relic patch and autograph from Griffey Jr, back in 2022.
The new record-setting ‘98 Essential Credentials Now card is graded a 9 by PSA—one of only 2 copies that have achieved that grade, with no PSA 10s in existence.
In the ‘98 Skybox E-X 2001 set, players had a base card with 2 parallel versions—the Essential Credentials Now and the Essential Credentials Future.
The “Now” versions are numbered to the player’s position in the checklist—for example, Griffey Jr. is #10 in the checklist, so his Now version is numbered /10. The “Future” versions are numbered in reverse—Griffey Jr.’s is numbered /91.
In Ken Griffey Jr. ‘s case, the Now parallel is far rarer than the Future parallel, and it’s the first example of a public auction for a copy of the card.
The Future parallel has sold for as much as $27,300 before (BGS 9.5), but the Now parallel has unsurprisingly sold for more and become the most expensive Ken Griffey Jr. card of all time.
The 1998 Skybox E-X 2001 Essential Credentials Future Ken Griffey Jr. card.
Top 3 Ken Griffey Jr. Card Sales
- 1998 Skybox E-X 2001 Essential Credentials Now #10 (2025).
- 1998 Upper Deck A Piece of the Action Patch Autograph #KGS (2022).
- 1998 Metal Universe Precious Metal Gems #161 (2023).
