Taking Griffentory Part 1: The Project

I have a lot of Griffeys.  Have I mentioned this before?

I spent the last two nights going through my binders and boxes trying to get an accurate count.  I’ve done quick-and-dirty counts before, but I’ve never approached the level of precision.

Going through the binders and hard-counting would drive me insane, so it was quicker to go year-by-year counting the empty pockets.  After that, I could simply count the pages and apply this simple formula:

9n - y = x

Where n is the number of pages, y is the number of empty page pockets, and x is the total number of Griffey cards in that year.  I then added each year’s x to the total number of encased Griffeys and those from the oversized box to get my first ever official total Griffey count.

Items I did not count:

- Ken, Sr. or Craig Griffey cards that don't feature Junior

- Topps Coins

- posters

- containers

- valentines

- magazines

- COAs

- Griffeys that are within completed sets

Items I did count:

- phone cards

- sealed Starting Lineup cards

- cameos

- error cards

- all-Griffey sets (e.g. my sealed Make a Wish set)

I also wanted to take it a step further and find the correct quantity of unique Griffey cards, that being the whole collection with the duplicates left out.  There was really no way around it - I would have to do a page-by-page hard count.  I would also have to check the backs to make sure I was including the promos and be very careful around the large, similar-looking, Griffey-exclusive sets (e.g. Griffey Gallery and Junior Circuit) which got special attention.

I counted as unique any differing parallels and variants, including O-Pee-Chee versions of Topps cards, factory set and Tiffany versions of base cards, minis, promos, samples, and error cards.  I did not count multiples from any numbered set, even though the cards are technically unique by serial number.

I’ll be releasing the results of these counts with a contest.  Comment below with your guess for each of the following:

1. the total number of Griffeys

2. the number of unique Griffeys

3. the Duplicate Ratio

The Duplicate Ratio is the ratio of total Griffeys to unique ones.  For example if I had 1000 Griffeys and 200 were unique, the ratio would be 5, or five Griffeys for every one unique Griffey.  1000/200 = 5.  You got it.

The closest to each wins a prize.  You have 48 hours to guess.  I’ll post the results of the Griffentory on Thursday.   Good luck!