Dennis sends awesomeness my way - Part 3 of 3 featuring all the Ken Griffey Jr.s!

Growing up, there were 6 guys I "collected."  Fred McGriff, Chipper Jones, "The Big Three" (Maddux, Glavine, and Smoltz), and Ken Griffey Jr.  I was psyched when I pulled one of these guys from a pack, targeted their cards in trades with my brothers, and sought them out in dime boxes when I went to shows.  The first five I collected because I was a huge Braves bandwagon fan during my mid-90's childhood.  The 6th guy I collected because he was the most exciting baseball player on the planet on the time, and like everyone else I couldn't get enough of him on cardboard.

So why did I decide to collect Ken Griffey Jr. now?  Because I used to then, and moving to Cincinnati (his hometown) has reminded me of how great that guy was and how much I'd love to own a lot of his cards again.  Most of what I had as a kid is gone - it was easy to trade away Griffeys in my return to cards, so my small collection of 50-100 cards quickly dwindled down to 2.  But the fact it stayed 2, over 6 years of trading, given my transient collection ways, is fairly remarkable.  I've had several collections and sets go from hundreds of cards to 0 in a New York minute.  The fact that I've held on to two Griffey Jr. cards for the entirety of my adult collecting life, despite not collecting the guy, really speaks to how much those cards mean to my collection.  So I figured they need some friends.

Dennis was happy to oblige.  In our most recent deal, he send me the aforementioned stuff, which came heavily from my specific wants/me finding the cards on Ebay.  All the Griffeys, however, were a surprise to me.  See Dennis collects Griffey as well, and saw I had just 2 cards in my whole new collection.  So he sent me 18 doubles, which was awesome for me!  Here they are, with a jaybarkerfan-esque sentence for each:

Lovin' this '92 Griffey - I named it a top 10 card from the set back when I completed 1992 Topps

I hated late 80's Bowman since it was oversized, but I loved early 90's Bowman and it's weird team by team stats on the back (and regular size!)

Diamond Kings has always been an awesome subset - many kudos to the late Dick Perez

1990 Donruss, on the other hand, was not a great overall set - but Griffey still makes it look cool with all that eye black

Here's a neat little Fleer card from when Barry Bonds was respected

Jumping forward a ton of years, this Donruss card is cool with the stars effect in the background of the design and Sean Casey in the background of the image

This picture is awesome - I think I had like 7 of this card growing up as I opened packs of 1997 Collector's Choice like it was my job

Very fancy/shiny Black Diamond card here - always a fantastic insert set

Here's one of the two big boppers in the package - it's Griffey's 1989 Bowman, which is oversized but still amazeballs

Some more 1997 Collector's Choice action, which was clearly aimed at kids but worked since I was 10 going on 11 when it came out originally

The other big bopper of the package - Griffey's intense looking 1989 Rated Rookie card - this is one Rated Rookie that Donruss got RIGHT

Another nice insert from ud - the back reminded me that Griffey hit 56 homers in back to back years in the late 90's, which were two pretty unforgettable seasons

Here's a cool Griffey/Hank Aaron dual card - We all really thought Griffey was going to challenge that award...injuries just had to wreak their ugly toll on Griffey though, sadly

Here's a pretty bossanova card - no nonsense and straight to the point

This next one's really weird - the image on the left is done again on the right in hologram-y fashion, with a nice homer shot in the middle.  Bizarre

STICKERS - these may end up on my binder someday, although I do already have another Griffey for that cause

Late career Griffey with the Reds - this is right before he ended things with the White Sox and a Seattle Mariners snoozefest

And finally, one post career card - this one talks about a beastly performance by Griffey versus the Rangers in 1994 - good stuff!

Clearly a nice little addition to my Griffey collection, especially with the two rookies, so I very much appreciate this surprise portion of my latest package!  Thanks for the goodies Dennis - you're the best!