2015 Topps Update

A few weeks back Topps released their 2015 Update series. As always I buy my boxes from Big D's in North Carolina. I told Jimmy to hold onto my box until I came down to visit for Thanksgiving. I have finally got around to post my hits.

First up the buybacks from the series. I pulled 7 buybacks in my box. By far the coolest one I pulled was the Carl Yastrzemski In Action card. The bad news about that card is is was in the worse shape out of the 7. Nothing major but does have a few creases on it.

Next up are the Ice Paralles (or that's what I think they're called). I pulled four of them out of the box.

The other parallels that I pulled from the box were mostly gold parallels #/2015. The Lorenzo Cain, Brock Holt, and Zach Britton are the coolest ones from the gold parallels. I did pull a few other ones also. The Brett Lawrie is a camo parallel #/99.

My relic card that I pulled features Chicago White Sox ace pitcher Chris Sale. It is a uniform piece from his All-Star uniform this season.

Lastly, I pulled one short print which features free agent outfielder Justin Upton boxing up his bats. My favorite card that I pulled is Detroit Tigers shortstop, Jose Iglesias during the All-Star game. The card is a black parallel out of 64.

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.

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.

A Pleasant Surprise

My first year of collecting baseball cards was two years ago in 2013. I started out with the Topps Series 1 buying a couple blaster packs from K-Mart (yes K-Mart I live in a small town and it is close to my house) before buying my first jumbo box. My next boxes that I bought were the 2013 Panini Team USA series. I pulled a Joey Gallo autograph was one of my two autos and then I pulled a couple relics. I did trade one of the relics to The Snorting Bull, but I do not remember that card. Being Team USA I wasn't sure who they were and more or less stored them away in my relic box and somewhat forgotten.

Well last night putting my Curtis Granderson card away I happened to flip past this Michael Conforto card that I pulled. A little background on Conforto he was a 10th overall pick in 2014 First Year Player Draft to the New York Mets. He made his debut this summer on July 24th. I remember hearing his name when he was called up. He put together a good half season for the Mets. In 56 games he hit .270/.335/.506 with 9 home runs and 26 RBIs. Needless to say I was pretty happy to see that I had pulled this card two years ago and it is still in my collection.

#MyCardMonday: Curtis Granderson

Sticking with the same game plan as last week I will pick a player who has been playing well during the playoffs for #MyCardMonday. This week I figured I would showcase one of my favorite former Detroit Tigers, Curtis Granderson. Drafted in 2002 by the Tigers, Granderson made his debut in 2004 and played for them until the off season following the 2009 season. During his time in Detroit Grandy would post a career OPS+ of 114 with a slash line of .272/.344/.484. He was involved in the trade with the Yankees and Diamondback that brought the Tigers Austin Jackson and Max Scherzer. During his 4 seasons as Yankee he would show off his power with 115 home runs. Last season he signed with the New York Mets and has been a huge contributor to them in their World Series push this season.

Grandy has done it all this post season. So far he is 9 for 24 with 3 runs and 7 RBIs. He has also stolen 3 bases for the Mets. Last night he flashed the leather with robbing Chris Coghlan of a home run.

#MYCARDMONDAY

A quick post for #MyCardMonday I thought I would go with someone who is currently playing for a playoff team. I have a trend of going with a relic or an autograph and thought I would switch it up with a gold parallel #/50 from the 2014 Bowman Chrome set. George Springer of the Houston Astros is coming off his second season where he hit .276/.367/.459 with 16 home runs and 41 RBIs this season. Currently the Astros won the AL Wildcard game against the New York Yankees where Springer went 1-4 with a double. Next up the Astros are taking on the Kansas City Royals as of right now (3:51 pm on 10/12) the Astos lead the Royals 5-2. If the Astros can hold on and win the game they will advance to the ALCS.

#MyCardMonday

With the regular season wrapping up this past weekend the Detroit Tigers did end on a high note. They beat the Chicago White Sox 6-0 with only giving up 3 hits, the young guys looked good with their hustle on Sunday, and Miguel Cabrera claimed his 4th batting title in 5 years.

In honor of Miggy winning another batting title I figured I would share another one of his cards for #MyCardMonday. This bat relic comes from the 2013 Topps Tier One set. This is my one and only bat relic that I have of Miggy and thought it was fitting for today.

Even the back of the card is pretty cool talking about Miggy's Triple Crown season of 2012 when he drove in 139 runs. The team had produced 726 runs that season. He drove in 19.15 percent of the runs that year which is the highest for a player whose team made the playoffs that year. He broke Johnny Bench of the Reds 1970 record of 19.10 percent.