Griffey Card Market Report — July 4, 2026

The rarest cards in 1996 don't trade often — but when they do, they rewrite the record book. The Select Certified Mirror Blue /45 finally showed its hand: a raw copy went to $4,496 at auction with 41 bids, the first ungraded data point ever on a card where only 45 exist. Twenty minutes of bidding told us more about that card than two years of guessing. Same story with the Topps Chrome Refractor #70 — the original '96 Chrome refractor had never shown a PSA 9 price until one hammered at $3,905 with 36 bids. And the Ultra Hitting Machines die-cut, already one of the toughest pulls of the year at 1:288, landed its first PSA 9 at $1,259. Underneath the fireworks, the serial-numbered Donruss stuff keeps waking up: Power Alley /5,000 raw jumped from $95 to $234 and the Summit Big Bang /600 more than tripled from $70 to $232. Not everything cooperated — Studio Stained Glass Stars raw slid from $150 to $114 on back-to-back sales. But the theme of the day was discovery: three cards that never had a market price before now have serious ones.

The Stadium Club Patent Leather Members Only PSA 10 just did something violent — $875 to $2,449 in one auction, 38 bids deep. The regular Patent Leather confirmed around $204 raw the very next day, which means the Members Only premium isn't drifting higher, it's detonating. Die-cut, low-pop, and now a four-figure card in gem. The Finest with Coating #139 also got its first PSA 10 on the books at $202, and Flair Showcase Row 0 raw pushed to $640 — that card refuses to cool off. The correction of the day was brutal but overdue: Collector's Choice Crash the Game Instant Winner had been sitting at $800 raw on stale data, and a real 10-bid auction just reset it to $178. That's not a crash, that's a price finally telling the truth. X-Ponential Power /3,000 quietly climbed from $110 to $150 — the Donruss Preferred serial-numbered cards keep finding new buyers.

The Finest Centurion /500 told two stories at once today, and both were corrections. The raw price had been parked at $898 on ancient data — a real sale just dragged it down to $180. Meanwhile the PSA 8 went the other way, climbing from $127 to $214 on two sales in a single day. Translation: the old raw number was fantasy, and the graded market is where the real demand lives. The Bowman Chrome Refractor #33 PSA 9 jumped from $300 to $425 — '98 Bowman Chrome keeps tracking upward grade by grade. And the Circa Thunder Rave Reviews, a 1:288 die-cut that almost never surfaces raw, finally landed its first ungraded price: $515 at auction with 25 bids. Even the base is moving — Metal Universe #161 PSA 9 ticked up to $212. The only cooler note: the Mirror Image Fusion Refractor /100 PSA 9 eased from $2,200 to $2,048, which on a /100 card is less a decline than a rounding error.

When the same card sells for $3,900 and $3,850 on back-to-back days, that's not a fluke — that's a new floor. The Topps Chrome All-Etch Refractor PSA 10 jumped from $2,800 to $3,875 on twin sales, cementing it as one of the elite '99 Chrome cards in gem. The Skybox Premium Soul of the Game got a full repricing top to bottom: two PSA 9 sales on the same day ($1,200 and $700) moved the grade from $400 to $950, while three raw sales pushed ungraded copies from $170 to $267. That card was a $65 raw afterthought two weeks ago. Skybox Thunder In Depth PSA 10 climbed from $340 to $550, Gallery of Heroes #GH3 PSA 9 rose to $318, and the Metal Universe Diamond Soul — the card that stunned everyone with a $1,000 PSA 9 last week — filled in its raw price at $431 on 32 bids. One eyebrow-raiser to watch: a Molten Metal Xplosion raw sold for $350, well above its own PSA 10 at $185. Either someone knows something about that low pop count, or someone overpaid. The sold listings will settle the argument soon enough.