In February 2018, J.D. Martinez signed a 5-year, $110 million contract with the Boston Red Sox. A month later, I was able to get his autograph at a Spring Training game in Sarasota, Florida:
He became a personal favorite of mine that day, and that contract became one of the best free agent signings in Red Sox history. That first season alone, Martinez hit 43 home runs with a league leading 130 RBI. He was the starting Designated Hitter for the AL All-Star team, won Player of the Month for the month of August, finished 4th in MVP voting, and became the first player in history to win 2 Silver Slugger Awards in one year (OF and DH). Oh, and the Red Sox won the World Series that year too. Needless to say, he was awesome.
I'm not a player collector, but I do enjoy the cardboard of some more than others. J.D. Martinez is one of those players. So of course, I was over the moon thrilled to receive a bunch of cards from Johnny (Johnny's Trading Spot) that contained an incredible amount of J.D. Martinez cards.
I thought it would be fun to look at my J.D. Martinez collection before/after. According to the TCDB, I had exactly 70 J.D. Martinez cards prior to this gift.
Actually, I'm in a 8-way tie for 130th place. (Johnny, if anyone is curious, is listed in 10th place!) I'm only 7 cards away from cracking the Top 100, which I'll do easily enough, but with what Johnny sent I'll be making quite a leap! I decided to show these off in groups of 15.
Group 1
Favorite card from this group: 2021 Topps - 1952 Topps Redux
New cards to my collection: 10
Total J.D. Martinez cards: 80
Just like that, I've moved into a 6-way tie for 87th place with 80 cards. If the other groups have a 2/3 success rate as new cards to my collection, I'll be making some impressive gains!
Group 2
Favorite card from this group: 2020 Stadium Club
New cards to my collection: 12
Total J.D. Martinez cards: 92
I'm not even half way through the cards Johnny sent, and I've already leaped 70 spots from 130th to a 3-way tie for 60th. You will notice some of the cards are the same within each group. I didn't bother sorting the cards prior to entering them in. I just took the first 15, put them into the database and moved to the next group. It led to quite a few deja vu moments!
Group 3
Favorite card from this group: 2019 Topps High Tek
New cards to my collection: 8
Total J.D. Martinez cards: 100
A couple of Diamondback cards, but that's perfectly OK with me! Martinez started out in Houston before famously getting released and being picked up by the Tigers, where he made his first All-Star team. He was a trade deadline deal to Arizona in 2017 before signing with Red Sox that off season.
Group 4
Favorite card from this group: 2021 Bowman's Best - Heatwave Die Cut
New cards to my collection: 8
Total J.D. Martinez cards: 108
All it took was 8 new cards to find myself firmly within the Top 40! One more group to go:
Group 5
Favorite card from this group: 2019 Panini Leather & Lumber - Lumberjacks
New cards to my collection: 15
Total J.D. Martinez cards: 123
81 J.D. Martinez cards were sent my way, and 53 of them were new to my collection. (That's 65% if you wanted to know the math). Thanks to Johnny, my collection of this player jumped 101 places into a tie for 29th all-time on the TCDB. Not bad, not bad at all! Will I ever get higher up the ladder? Who knows! For now I'm just thankful for the journey!
Thanks again Johnny! You're awesome!
Oh, he sent me more than just Martinez! That, however, will be a post for later!
What's funny about being #10, is he isn't a PC guy. Those 197 cards are all in set builds. LOL. Happy to give you a boost.
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