Card Collecting over Thanksgiving

This year for Thanksgiving I was lucky enough to spend a few days in the warm weather in North Carolina visiting family. I cannot think of the last time my whole family was together for Thanksgiving. Along with the warm 70 degree with and the awesome dinner my sister made I was also able to talk baseball and card collecting with my brother-in-law The Snorting Bull. He was going through some cards and put some aside for me that he knew I would enjoy. Besides receiving some cool cards I also got some really good tips on collecting from him.

The first card that he had for me was from 1989 Bowman set that he was putting together. Being a huge Ken Griffey Jr. fan he had this awesome rookie for me. The thing that is cool about the card is the fact that it is slightly bigger then your typical baseball card.

The next three cards come from the 1998 E-X 2001 set. This is one of the coolest base set cards I have seen. I would have been 9 years old when this set came out and it was long before I serious collected. I could have a few of these in my collection as a kid, but with them being sold there is no way to tell. The cards feature Tony Clark (one of my favorite Tigers as a kid), Ivan, Pudge, Rodriguez (before he was a Tiger) and Justin Thompson.

After making the comment about how cool the E-X 2001 cards were, the Snorting Bull was talking to me about older card sets that had the same idea. He found a 1998 Topps Tek card of St. Louis Cardinals, Mark McGwire and he added it to my pile. He must have had a few of these to give up a Cardinals card.

The one current Tigers card that he had for me was of Miguel Cabrera from the 2015 Gypsy Queen set. It features a piece of his uniform and is #/25. Always great to add a Cabrera card to my collection.

The last card is a dual autograph card of early nineties Detroit Tigers, Frank Tanana (left) and Mickey Tettleton (right). During the nineties the Tigers didn't have any great teams. Tettleton had his best part of his career during his four years as a Tiger with a career OPS+ of 135 in Detroit. Tanana spent eight years in Detroit and had a career ERA+ 99 with the Tigers.

Thank You Snorting Bull

Last week my parents went on a vacation to see my two sisters, brother-in-law, and nephew in North Carolina. For my dad it was more of a working vacation with the projects my sister had for him to do. I decided to stay in town, because of the busy end of the month for my job. When my parents returned home and stopped over and had dinner with them and talked about their trip. My dad told my mom to get what Eric (The Snorting Bull) gave me.

Again I will state I am a huge Ken Griffey Jr. fan. I grew up in the 90's idolizing him as a player. Even to this day he is ranked right at the top of my list as my all time favorite baseball players. Eric had this print laying around and didn't have much use for it and thought it should go to a good home. This is a print done by the artist Rick Rush and it is 1,877 out of 5,000 in production. I know pretty big number, but still cool to me. The picture shows Griffey's sweet swing (one of the best swing in all of baseball). From what I read it is suppose to be during the 1997 season when he was chasing the current home run record of Roger Maris' 61 homers. He would finish the season 5 short with 56 home runs.

Thanks again Eric a.k.a. The Snorting Bull!

Ken Griffey Jr.: My Childhood Hero

Yesterday while checking some of the usually baseball sites that I read, I stumbled upon this article about Ken Griffey Jr. and his trade from Seattle to Cincinnati. Growing up in the 90's what kid wasn't a fan of Griffey. I remember playing little league and trying mimic his swing at the plate, but what stood out the most for me with him was his defense. Watching highlights of him taking away home runs was just awesome to me.

This was one of my first Griffey cards that I added to my collection. What is cool about this card it has part of his batting glove in it. I haven't seen really any other relic card that has something other then a part of a jersey or a bat. Pretty cool relic to have.

Going back to the article written about Griffey the other thing that made me really like him growing up was how close he was with his dad and his family. He always put family first. I am lucky enough to have a close relationship with my family and especially with my dad. Just like Griffey, I am able to work with my dad (I am salesperson at a Chevy dealership and my dad is the parts manager).

Can't have an article about my favorite baseball player of all time without having a highlight film.

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.