My Trip to Big D's

Being from Northern Michigan I do not have a local card shop that I can go to. There is one in East Tawas from what I found online, but that is still over an hour drive for me. I consider North Carolina my second home due to the fact I have two sisters, a brother-in-law, a nephew, and an aunt and uncle that live there. My brother-in-law Eric or better known as The Snorting Bull is the one person who reintroduced me into collecting cards. This past August I was down there for a wedding and Eric and I took a trip to his favorite card shop, Big D's before the wedding. Eric had let Jimmy the owner know that I am a pretty big Detroit Tigers fan and he had pulled aside some cool cards for me.

The first couple cards I looked at were some short print Miguel Cabrera cards. I tend to be pretty bad at collecting or paying attention to short print cards so I figured this would be a good start to looking for short prints.

The next card Jimmy sold me was newly acquired second basemen Ian Kinsler autograph. I had already collected a quad piece relic of Kinsler, but had not had a chance to add a Kinsler autograph yet.

My favorite Tiger's card that I picked up from Jimmy was this cool 2014 Topps Series 1 of Victor Martinez. I really like the parallels in theses sets. He also had the black one, but I had pulled that out of a pack that I had bought earlier in the year. I think I am going to try to collect all of the different color parallels of V-Mart for last year. Two coolest ones I can check off my list.

 My last card I bought kinda caught Jimmy off guard. Growing up in the 90's I was a huge Ken Griffey Jr. fan. I spot this card actually right away when I walked into the shop and started looking around. I would look at it then go on and look at some other cards, but always found myself going right back to this card. I finally asked Jimmy want he wanted for it and he gave me what I thought was a great price and it was mine!

With not having a local shop of my own I had considered Big D's as my own shop. After going there in August Jimmy would message me on Twitter about buying boxes he was selling and I found his prices were just as competitive as where I was buying boxes online. It was unfortunate news to hear that Jimmy had shut his doors to Big D's last week. It is always sad to see a local shop close. If you have a local card shop to buy from do your best and try to support them. The owners are fans of collecting cards just like us.