Ken Griffey Jr. is #33 among the 1989 Donruss Rated Rookies, the company's picks of the young players to watch. The set, 660 cards, opened with 27 painted Diamond Kings, and the twenty Rated Rookies followed, #28 through #47.
He was nineteen, the first overall pick of the 1987 draft, out of Moeller High School in Cincinnati.
The RATED ROOKIE logo sits in the upper corner in blue and white. Griffey is in a batting helmet and the Mariners' blue jersey, gloves on, a bat on his shoulder, looking straight into the camera. KEN GRIFFEY JR. OF runs across the top, the borders are black down the sides with bands of purple fading to blue at the top and bottom, and the Donruss 89 logo sits in the lower corner.
Donruss printed a great many of these cards. Wax packs came with three pieces of a Warren Spahn puzzle, and some packs carried bonus MVP cards.
Donruss rated him a rookie to watch. The dark borders make him hard to find clean.
The dark borders are the difficulty. They show every nick and chip along the edges, and clean copies are far harder to find than the size of the print run would suggest.
