[djohn]

The thing about the Griffey 89 UD is the card's value is highly tied into the fact it was the first card printed by UD. It was like $50 or $100 on day one. Griffey hadn't played an out in the majors yet. He was just a prospect (and son of a pretty good ballplayer) that they just happened to put on the first card. Sure, he turned out to be one of the best, but it's that 1 on the back that dictated it's high BV.

Not true at all. Griffey was the top overall draft pick in 1987 and when he made his debut he was one of the hottest players in the hobby. However back in 1989 the card was never even close to $50 (which would've been beyond absurd for that time when a $1 card was a BIG deal, and people were buying 100 count lots of base star cards as investments). It took many many years before the card hit $50 and many more before it topped out around $150 (driven by the then growing grading industry), before making the decent to where it is now.

Here is a picture of a price guide from 1989 that I remember very well. Note that the listed value for a Griffey rookie (including his Upper Deck card) was only $1.75 (which was A LOT for a new card at that time).

[wordsense]

1989 set and Ken Griffey, Jr.[edit]
In the 1989 Upper Deck baseball set, Ken Griffey, Jr. was selected to be featured on card number one.[24] The decision to make Griffey, Jr. the first card was reached in late 1988.

A teenage employee named Tom Geideman was the one who suggested the use of Griffey as its choice for the number-one card. Traditionally, Topps had a system for reserving various numbers in their sets (such as numbers 1 and 100) for the biggest stars in the game. Geideman decided that a top prospect should be honored with the number one card in the inaugural 1989 set. After reviewing Baseball America, Geideman narrowed the list of candidates to four: Gregg Jefferies of the New York Mets, Gary Sheffield of the Milwaukee Brewers, Sandy Alomar, Jr. of the San Diego Padres, and Ken Griffey, Jr. Geideman was a Mariners fan and decided that Ken Griffey, Jr. should be the prospect featured on card number one of the 1989 set.

I just checked an old Beckett I have from Oct. 1990, and the BV was $25. So I was partially wrong. Upper Deck became an overnight sensation...The Collector's Choice, if you will. The fact that card is #1 in the first UD set plays part in the value.

[Hofcollector]

Yes, but Griffey's career is over so there is little that can cause a surge in value. Also, they made over a million of his 1989 Upper Deck rookie cards, compared to the few thousand of each card they make of today's rookie cards. I just checked and there are almost 60,000 1989 UD Griffey rookies graded by PSA alone, not to mention how many are graded by BGS (the POP report tool wasn't working when I just tried to look it up) and all the other graders (as the 1989 UD Griffey card was probably one of the most popular cards to get graded). If you compare the value of the 1989 UD Griffey to other rookies from the same era, you will see that even at it's current book value it is significantly higher than any other rookie in that era.
All that being said it is still an iconic card that everyone wants in their collection.

+1.
Side note, I cant tell you what those booked for in the early 90's but I do remember seeing them being sold at $150 in my LCS' s.