Buy Low, Sell High

It has been awhile since I have wrote about baseball and baseball cards on my blog. In the past week I have added a few more cards to my collection. I will start with my Victor Martinez lot that I bought off ebay for under $10. After getting the cards and going through what all I received I thought it was a pretty good purchase. It is a perfect example of collecting a player after he has had a down year. V-Mart battled injuries all season and had one of his worse season to date. I believe a healthy Martinez next year will be back to the .300 hitter with 15 home runs and 80 RBIs. Let's take a look at the cards that I received.

These two cards were the only ones that I knew where part of the deal. It was V-Mart lot and had both cards listed and said with extra V-Mart cards. The first card is from the 2011 Topps 60 relic set part of series 1 for that year. It is of V-Mart with the Boston Red Sox honoring his 2010 season when he lead the league with a .400 batting average against left handed pitching. The second card is from the 2015 Topps Stadium Club set. The member only stamp means it is a short print card and is one of 7 cards. Two really cool cards and I would have been happy to with both of them for $10, but there was more.

The lot also included a gold and purple parallel cards, a card /50 and a insert card honoring his first home run on September 29th, 2002. I also had some base cards to go with these 6 cards. All in all I was pretty impressed with all of the cards I received for a good buy.

A buy like this makes me think that collecting cards is somewhat like the stock market, you try to buy while the players value is low and sell them when their value high. I will probably not be looking to move these cards, because V-Mart is one of my favorite players, but I will continue to look for good buys.

Congrats V-Mart

This season might not have been the greatest for the Detroit Tigers designated hitter, Victor Martinez. Yesterday, though he did have a nice highlight slugging his 200th home run of his career. Even with the Tigers not making the playoffs they have had some good career highlights with players throughout the season, including V-Mart's 200th long ball.

We won't be seeing the Tigers in the playoffs this season, but I love the expression of V-Mart. He plays with a lot of passion and he shows with his picture on this card.

Congrats V-Mart and hope to see many more with you wearing the Old English D!

Collecting Detroit Tigers: Victor Martinez

Out of everyone on the Detroit Tigers since 2011, Victor Martinez has been my favorite player. I really love how he is a fighter at the plate and rarely strikes out. He has came up clutch for the Tigers and has added much needed protection to Miguel Cabrera. One of my favorite cards of V-Mart's to collect is from the Topps Museum Collection. This card here is the quad relic from the 2015 series. I believe I added 3 or 4 of them from last year as well. Sometimes it is just white uniform pieces, but other times it has a pinstripe or part of the Old English D or the Detroit logo from an away jersey. All in all I tend to try to added a card or two now from this series.

I am glad to see V-Mart back in the lineup and producing. After coming back from the DL he has really swung the bat well for the Tigers. They need his bat while Miggy is on the DL. For the past month he has put up .285/.338/.455 with 4 home runs and 13 RBIs.

#MyCardMonday

Quick post for #mycardmonday. Since Victor Martinez signed in the off-season for the 2011 season he quickly became one of my favorite players in the game. He had a big season in his first year wearing the Old English D, but the following season he missed due to a knee injury. After the injury I said that even if he doesn't play one more game for the Tigers he would go down as one of my favorites. Besides carrying a big bat he showed he was a leader in the clubhouse. Last year I believe he would have been the MVP if he wasn't a primary DH player. If he could have played first everyday and put up the same numbers that he did he would have been the clear choice for MVP. Again this year he is already dealing with another knee injury and I wish him a quick recovery!

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.

TBT: The moves of 2011

For the first ever Throw Back Thursday I want to talk about the moves that Dave Dombrowski and the Tigers made in 2011. In baseball one of the greatest feats is becoming a Triple Crown winner. For a batter that is leading the league in batting average, home runs, and RBIs (lastly done in 2012 Miguel Cabrera) and for pitchers they need to lead in wins, strikeouts, and ERA (Justin Verlander/Clayton Kershaw 2011). Now for general managers I think they should have a triple crown based on the moves they make for their team. I would say they would need to have the best off-season free agent signing, make the best trade before the July 31st deadline, and they also need to make the best waiver claim in August. Now with just making the moves is one thing, but these players also need to produce for their new teams.

The 2011 off-season had many top talented free agents. The list was lead by Cliff Lee, Carl Crawford, Adrian Beltre, Jason, Werth, Adam Dunn, and Victor Martinez to name a few. The Detroit Tigers were looking to add another bat to the lineup to hit behind Miguel Cabrera. Well Dave Dombrowski decided that guy should be Victor Martinez. He signed V-Mart to a four year $50 million contract. Well V-Mart lived up to that contract his first year. He hit .330/.380/.470 with only striking out 51 times in 595 plate appearances. He was primarily the Tigers DH, but could also spell Miggy at first and Avila at catcher. He would also bring a leadership role to the clubhouse for the Tigers. By far I would say he was the best off-season signing.

The day before the deadline DD would pull off a trade for a pitcher most people probably didn't know. His name would become a household name, that guy Doug Fister. The Tigers traded a couple prospects (Chance Ruffin, Charlie Furbush, Casper Wells, and Francisco Martinez) for Doug Fister and David Pauley of the Seattle Mariners. Now Fister was headed to a team that could score some runs for him. His ERA with the Mariners was 3.33, but he had 3 wins and 12 losses. Once he got to Detroit he was even better. He would go on to have a 1.79 ERA with a 8-1 record. He had a sub 1 WHIP and really pushed the Tigers into the playoffs and strength their starting rotation.

Now the waiver claim I unfortunately do not have a card to post. I could have found a base card I guess. The Tigers lineup was pretty good, but with an injury to outfielder Brennan Boesch and a struggling Magglio Ordonez, the Tigers claimed Delmon Young from the Minnesota Twins. They would in return send minor leaguer Cole Nelson to the Twins. Young played 84 games for the Twins and only 40 games for the Tigers, but out of his 12 home runs 8 of them came as a Tiger and he drove in just as many runs for the Tigers (32 RBIs) as he did for the Twins. Once the Tigers made the playoffs he went off in the ALDS against the New Yankees with a .316/.381/.789 slash line and 3 homers.

The Tigers would advance to the ALCS and eventually lose to the Texas Rangers. With V-Mart and Fister they would both go on to have successful careers in the next few seasons with Detroit and leading to the Tigers resigning V-Mart this off-season. Even Delmon Young who was painful to watch during the 2012 season was a huge contributor in the 2012 playoffs that lead the Tigers to the World Series run for Tigers. All in all I would say just looking at the 2011 season Dave Dombrowski looked like a hero. Great free agent signing and great trades. He didn't give up much and none of the players he did trade has really amount to anything. So I will congratulate Dave Dombrowski on winning my Triple Crown for general managers.