Friday Five: My Favorite Miggy Cards

I do not write about the Tigers often on this blog, but they have long been a team on my radar. My wife is a Michigan native, so my in-laws are all big Tigers fans. My middle schooler likes the Tigers (not you Javy Baez) and will watch their games. I have been fortunate enough to attend a few Tigers games over the years. They have a great stadium if you are ever in Detroit. 

The last Tigers game I attended was two summers ago and I was fortunate enough to see Miguel Cabrera one last time in person. I knew it was likely going to be the last time, so I took a few pictures......

In the end, Miggy walked off the Twins on an odd single that landed between the centerfielder and the shortstop. The Twins had actually been really aggressive with pinch hitting and had Nick Gordon, normally a second baseman or shortstop, playing in centerfield.  

On to the cards. I think I have a sneaky good collection of Miggy cards, so I thought it would be fun to do one of my Friday posts featuring some of my favorites of the future Hall of Famer.  

5. 2013 Topps Miguel Cabrera Triple Crown Relic 

Not sure where winning the Triple Crown ranks on Miggy's list of career accomplishments, but it feels like it should be up there. I also feel like it rarely gets mentioned when people talk about his career. I watched his last few games, not sure it really got brought up. Maybe the accomplishment has lost some of its luster in recent years with the push on using sabermetric stats. Do people really talk about batting average anymore? 

I love this card. It's die-cut, has a nice action picture of Miggy with a swatch of his jersey, and is better than anything else I have seen that recognizes him as a former Triple Crown winner. These have gotten pricey and hard to find over the last decade.  

T4. 2011 Triple Threads Miguel Cabrera Patch Card 

Two relic cards in a post is my limit in the year 2023. I do not really do relic cards, but this one is too good to not post on my list. I went all in on the 2011 Triple Threads set and have some great looking cards from this product. I could easily make a few posts on some of the cards. This is one of my favorites. 

I have never really tried to figure out all the patch pieces on here, but there is a lot of blue and orange. I think it's the Detroit script off of a road Tigers uniform, as the home uniforms do not have any orange..... 

The patch piece on the LL of the card is white, orange, and then a partial piece of blue. Looks similar to the top of Ts in the word "Detroit" on the road uniforms. 

T4. 2011 Triple Threads Miguel Cabrera Autograph 

I will fudge on the five card thing a bit in this post and go ahead and share one of the Triple Threads autographs I have of Miggy from the 2011 set while we are here. Yes, it's a sticker autograph, but it's a clear sticker on a really great looking card. 

3. 2012 Topps Five Star Miguel Cabrera Autograph 

I love Five Star. I don't open any packs of it, because they cost a second mortgage on your house. I just like when people sell their autographs that do not make them a profit on their $250 box of cards. You pulled a Miguel Cabrera autograph and need to sell it? I am listening.  

I have several Miguel Cabrera autographs that are not going to be included in this list. They are all really great cards that I am sure the average sane collector would love to have in their collection. This is my favorite Miggy autograph and it's the last one on this list. This Five Star is an on-card autograph and has really thick card stock. Yes, it's got a jersey and some art work, that's kind of an afterthought here. I wish I could scan the side of the card to show off the stock, it's impressive.  

2. 2001 Bowman Heritage Miguel Cabrera 

Huge fan of the 2001 Bowman Heritage set. Have a ever told you about how much I love the Albert Pujols card in this set? I don't love Miggy that much, but it's close. Is this considered a rookie card? I treat it like it's a rookie card. It's in a magnetic one-touch and everything. This is a great looking card and aesthetically probably my favorite card of Miguel Cabrera on the Marlins. 

1. 2000 Topps Traded Miguel Cabrera 

The 2000 Topps set is trash, but the Traded set is pretty nice. You've got rookie cards of Adam Wainwright, Ben Sheets, and Miguel Cabrera. That's more checklist depth than the 1982 Topps Traded set. If I had to make a list of the most important 2000s rookie cards, this Miguel Cabrera would be really high on the list. Great card. First ballot Hall of Famer wearing a teal Marlins uni, not sure how it gets better than that.  

Baseball, Hold The Cards

It has been a great summer.  

I really needed a break from work for a few weeks.  My in-laws live in a small town in Northern Michigan that is on Lake Huron, we took a vacation to see them for a week.  I love living in North Carolina, but there is something really nice about getting outside in the summer when the high temperatures are in the 70s and there is a giant lake nearby.  

Here were some of my views.  

Besides staring at Lake Huron and enjoying the cool air, I also had a chance to take in a little baseball.  

Before this past week, I had been able to attend a few Durham Bulls games, as well as a Carolina Mudcats game that ended up getting rained out.  My two awesome kids had gifted me tickets to a Tigers and Twins game for Father's Day a few weeks back.  I was happy to spend a weekend in Detroit and take in a Tigers game.  

I go to Michigan all the time, but it has been a few years since I last attended a Tigers game.  We usually go for Christmas.  Nobody stops to see a Lions game.  

Being the first weekend game after the All-Star Break, the Tigers had promoted the game as a second Opening Day.  They had a good list of former players signing autographs at Comerica Park before the game.  Plus there were players from the Red Wings, Lions, Pistons, and Detroit FC.  

  

I went all-in on getting an autograph of Mickey Lolich.  He was on the Durham Bulls for a few years during the late 1950s and early 1960s.  Unfortunately, the autographs were limited and I am not sure if Mickey Lolich even ended up signing.  

I will hold onto my baseball for another day.  

In the meantime, there was a baseball game between the Tigers and Twins.  Plus, I got to spend time walking around Comerica Park, which is very nice.  If you are near Detroit and have some extra time, it's worth a visit.  

It seemingly never makes those "Best Ballparks" lists.  Is there another stadium with better entrance gates?  I would have to say the answer is no, but I also have not been to all the other stadiums.  The giant Tigers and baseball bats are what immediately catch the eye, but the walls around the gates have blue and orange tile.  

It's impressive.  

This is my panoramic shot from behind home plate.  

I like the view into downtown Detroit beyond the wall.  

The concourses were fun to walk around.  The Tigers were an original American League team, founded in 1901, and have had their fair share of good players and teams.  They have done a nice job of highlighting the history of the franchise with these kiosk-looking displays that are broken down by decades.  

Small detail, but neat considering it's Detroit.  Each of the kiosks is mounted on a set of automobile tires that match the automotive-style of the time period.  The 1960s has whitewall tires with plain hub caps.  I was not alive in the 1960s, but I am going to trust the Tigers that those were stylish at the time.  

I was trying to figure out the player on one of the 1990s banners.  

Pretty lean decade for the Tigers.  I would have gone with Cecil Fielder if I were choosing the player.  I was hoping this might be a slimmed-down Bob Hamelin, but I think it might actually be Dave Bergman.  He's more of a 1980s Tiger, but I know he is a popular player in those parts and played into the 1990s.  

They had a photo of Juan Gonzalez is one of the displays. Shout out to the Tigers for not sugar-coating your team's history, even when the teams were not very good.  It's not the Tigers' fault they cashed in their Minor League system the same year that a certain player decided not to use steroids anymore.  

Paws, the Tigers mascot, was also on the concourse before the game.  

He took a picture with my son, in spite of the fact that I wore a Cardinals shirt to the game.  I am pretty sure he was making fun of my shirt after the picture.  It's hard to do when you can't talk.  Maybe he was just pointing me to the team store.  

On to the game.  

I was happy to see Miguel Cabrera again.  I saw him early in his career while he was with the Marlins, also during his prime with the Tigers.  Miggy may be old and his numbers are down, but he is still a fan favorite.  

Cabrera hit a long, loud foul, along with a long loud fly out to the deepest part of the park.  More on Miggy's night later in the post.  Here is the long foul ball hit against Kenta Maeda in the first inning. 

The Tigers have a lot of young players at the moment.  I really enjoyed watching Akil Badoo.  He is a fun player, reminds me of someone who could have been on the 1980s Cardinals team.  Gap hitter with a ton of speed, which should play well in Comerica Park.  The outfield dimensions are huge.  

Here is a picture of Akil that I took in the third inning.  

The at-bat ended well for him.  He hit a bases-clearing triple to give the Tigers the lead.  

.@AkilBaddoo for threeeee! pic.twitter.com/C2VoNrEIOl

— Detroit Tigers (@tigers) July 17, 2021

Definitely going to have to find a few Akil Badoo cards for the collection.  

In the end, the Tigers ended up winning the game on a single from Miguel Cabrera in extra innings.  

 

Just like Miggy drew it up. pic.twitter.com/QEDA11sn3S

— Detroit Tigers (@tigers) July 18, 2021

The Twins really did not defense that very well. 

Anyway, vacation is ending soon and I am back to teaching.  Hopefully, I can squeeze in a few more Minor League games before the season ends in September.   Might have to squeeze the Durham Bulls games into one large post.  

The Cracker Jack Prize

We all have dreams we aspire to reach in life.  I have several that involve old baseball cards.  One of them is to own an old Cracker Jacks cards from the 1910s.  Not just any old Cracker Jacks card, but I have a short list of players that would be the most ideal to find on a copy of one of those cards.  They are quite expensive. 

Hall of Famers can be hundreds, if not thousands of dollars.  Occasionally you can find a Cracker Jack card for around $50, but not very often.  Inexpensive usually means that there are condition issues that go above and beyond.

Not my card, but a good example of a Cracker Jack card with a few flaws. 

So, for years I have set aside my dream of owning a Cracker Jack card from yesteryear in favor of just owning a few nice ones from the Topps rehash from 2004 and 2005.  Still pretty nice players in there. 

My two favorite Cracker Jack cards are.......

My Yadier Molina rookie card out of the 2004 set.  

I also have a Miguel Cabrera autograph.  He's looks like he's in middle school in this picture.  

Recently one of the unaffordable Cracker Jack cards that is on my short list came available.  It's of George Whitted, or Possum Whitted, who is a Durham, North Carolina native.  I have been trying to find a few of his cards over the past few months.  I have been successful.  

He was on the Phillies at the time his Cracker Jack card was made, but he also played for the Cardinals and for the Durham Bulls.  He also managed the Bulls.  There has been a Buy It Now copy of this card on Ebay for awhile, but at $250 I have been passing month after month.  

It's not the cleanest copy, but I picked it up on the low end of the price spectrum for a Cracker Jack card.  The $250 card, but on major clearance.  I am really happy to add this to my Durham Bulls/Cardinals collection.  It's already high on my list, and it's not been here for long.  

It's in a protective case, so it's not the best scan.  

There are two main flaws with the card.  First, there is chipping along with the edges near the top left corner.  The mark on the side almost looks like it could be from a thumbtack.  The card is also discolored along the bottom border.  I am not quite sure why it is discolored, I am a little scared to take it out of the case at this point.  

Here is the back.  I had originally tried to scan the back, but it did not turn out very well.  I flipped the photo since the backs are upside on Cracker Jack cards.  

I like the bio on the back of this card, which mentions that he is from Durham and that he was on the Cardinals.  There is also mention of him playing in Wadesboro, which is near Charlotte, but there is nothing on his Baseball Reference page about him being on that team.  In fact, when you try to find information about baseball in Wadesboro the only thing that pops up is information about an Expos Minor Leaguer from the early 2000s who was from that town.  

Not my card, but Antonio Garris owns the search for Wadesboro and baseball.  

Overall, it feels good to own a Cracker Jack card that is more than a century old.  Even better that it is a player who appeared for my favorite Major and Minor League teams.  Quite a prize. 

and finally....here's Gypsy Queen (Part 1)

When did Gypsy Queen come out again?  It was several weeks ago, but I am just writing a post about the two boxes I opened up now.  What happened to cause this delay?  The statistics of page views do not support what I am about to say, so I will first thank you for continuing to visit my page in spite of the fact that I did not post as regularly as a normally do in terms of both quantity and quality.  The beginning of April started with a vacation.  By the time the vacation ended and returned to work my schedule of writing and posting cards and the whatnot was completely in taters.  I managed to get to the end of April and have worked my way back into shape in terms of posts. 

So, to actually answer the question at the top of the post the product arrived on April 15th.  I attended the Durham Bulls home opener that evening and left my boxes of Gypsy Queen in my car.  The next day, after work, I opened them live on Periscope.  Something I am playing with, but I need to use an Ipad instead of my phone.  I also need to have the camera set up so that it is somewhat still.  If you are on Periscope my user is the Snorting Bull. 

After the Periscope broadcast these cards just sat on my desk.  So, between a post this evening and tomorrow I am planning on catching everyone up on my Gypsy Queen cards including my two cents on the set and design this year. 

Lets start off with the good stuff.....


Autographs 

I opened two boxes of Gypsy Queen so I was supposed to receive a total of four autographs.  I kind of made it there.  I have not run into a redemption this year, but after last year I have decided to sell/trade all of my code cards this year.  Probably next year and the year after that too...... Yes, I got three autographs and a redemption card.

Obviously I really like the Matt Adams autograph.  It's always cool to pull an autograph from your favorite team out of a box that you open.  Adams is not my favorite Cardinal, but I probably would have ended up with this card at some point, so it's all good.  Someone asked me on Twitter whether Pompey was one of those guys I liked because I saw him in Triple A, but he actually was never in Buffalo before the Jays sent him down there this season.  Gausman and Johnson are nice autographs too.  I will let you know what the Gausman brings me when it is traded/sold. 

Relics 

Last year I did really well with the relics in this product pulling a button card from Greinke.  I was hoping for a similar card this year, but I guess that would have been beating some pretty long odds.  Here's what I did ended up landing......

Gypsy Queen can have some rather ordinary relics, so I was happy to draw out the Kolten Wong, again a Cardinal, and the low print run Miggy with the nice frame border.  Honestly, as much as I was hoping for something cool, like a button card, I also feared drawing four relic cards with names like Adrian Gonzalez.  Nothing against Adrian, but he's not my favorite player and that's a rather ordinary looking relic.  Back me up Dodgers people....

Plates-

and here is where my box was made.  I have heard different collectors say that there seemed to be a lot of plates being pulled out of Gypsy Queen this year and I have to agree.  I have seen numerous box breaks and different collectors on social media open boxes/cases and post their hits.  Lots of plates.  My two were pretty nice, so I cannot complain. 

This one was kind of a surprise to me.  I am not a huge plate person and I do not actively seek them out to buy or trade.  If one happens into my collection at the right price, so be it.  I am not sure how many of these I have pulled over the years, but I do not think that I have ever landed a printing plate of an insert card.  This seems to be a first as far as I can remember.  It's a nice card. 

Lastly, a Liriano plate.  I like the frame around the plate.  Really nice card and made for a nice finishing touch for my two boxes of Gypsy Queen. 

A Trip To Big D's Sportcards

It was a quiet afternoon on the homestead yesterday, so I decided a trip to my local card shop, Big D's Sports Cards, would make the day a little better.  Jimmy had set aside a cool autograph of former NC State player Julius Hodge.  For those not familiar with Julius, he played at State from 2001-2005.  He was an All-ACC selection several times and was the conference player of the year during the 2003-2004 season.  His two most famous moments at State were aggravating Chris Paul to the point where he punched him in nuts and wrecking everyone's NCAA tournament bracket in 2005 when he made a great play to knock out UConn.  (apologizes for the video quality).

Hodge lasted two years in the NBA playing for the Nuggets, Lakers, and Bucks.  He has since played a long career overseas dominating the Australian Basketball League and Twitter.  Here's my autograph:

Of course you can't go into a card shop and just walk away with an autograph, unless it's an awesome autograph, so I stayed and shopped for awhile and picked up a few nice cards for the collection.  Here's what else I picked up yesterday:

My 2014 Topps set is coming along nicely and Jimmy had a few really nice pieces I decided to add to my growing collection from last month's new Topps set.  I already have three of the class rings (Stan, Rickey Henderson, and Randy Johnson), but decided to add a fourth with this Miguel Cabrera ring.  I'm a pretty big fan of the Tigers slugger and enjoy picking up his cards, even if they have him in a Marlins jersey.  I also picked up an autograph and jersey card from the 2014 Topps set:

Both cards are kind of a roll of the dice for the coming season.  Just two players I have a good feeling about.  Davidson was traded from the Diamondbacks to the White Sox where he will be the team's starting third baseman this season.  He had a "cup of coffee" with the DBacks last year, and while the numbers are not great, there not terrible and I like some of what I see with the former first round pick.  Mainly, half of his hits were extra base hits, 9 of them, with less than 100 at-bats.  In the minors he had an OBP over .350 and had roughly half of his hits come in the form of extra base hits.  Not saying the average is every going to be great, but get on base and show some pop, can't go wrong.  Rondon?  See Tigers bullpen.  He's big and throws really hard.  Rondon is great in the International League, just waiting for him to show up in the American League.  

 

I also picked up two minis from the 2014 Topps set.  Both of these cards seem extra cool given that both were active and very good players at the time the 1989 Topps set was released.  The Raines card would be even cooler if Topps had put down his name as Rock Raines, which was on the original 1989 Topps card.  Speeding things up:

 

A Gold Parallel of Matt Holliday's 2014 Topps card.  I already have the red version.  

Three Shelby Miller cards.....

 

and a Max Scherzer Topps Heritage Chrome card.  A great haul and great day at Big D's.