The Petrick Collection Continues to Grow

I recently posted about a few Ben Petrick pick ups for one of my newer player collections and shared my desire to surpass the 50% mark.  JediJeff from the blog 2 by 3 Heroes commented that he was 45 cards behind me and that he needed to get going.  Sorry to tell you Jeff but after a recent Beckett.com Marketplace shopping spree you are even farther behind.

If you don't know Petrick's story, this ESPN story can get you up to speed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99cyiDGHHOo (thanks Josh!).  It is a very sad story and one I can somewhat relate to as my Grandma suffered and passed from Parkinson's as well.  With Petrick being so young, the story is even more sad.  My way of honoring him and my Grandma with my card collection is this collection.

Here are my recent pick ups:

This group is all minor league cards prior to Petrick rise to the Major leagues.  Even back in the late 1990s card companies were putting out silly parallels.  The Baseball America cards are only different based on the presence of the 4 diamonds and silver/gold foil in the bottom left hand corner of the cards.  The 99 Just card is a gold border parallel.  While I do consider these silly, they also offer up the chance to build a stronger and larger player collection. 

This group features cards from Bowman products.  The top left and right are Bowman Chrome International parallels, I have always been a fan of this parallel set.  The top middle card is a refractor.

 Here is a nice group of Pacific cards.  I don't believe I ever opened any Pacific cards during the time they were released so these are always new to me.  That top center Prism parallel is one of 14 different parallels of the base card.  I now have the base and 8 of those parallels, I think that would be a fun one to finish although some of the rarer versions can carry a premium price.  The tiny card is a Card Supial, I believe it was designed to fit in a pouch of a bigger card.  As far as I can tell, Petrick only has the small version.

The top left card is the Gold Back version, reminds of the red letter backs of 2007 Topps - not really a fan of this parallel approach but as a player collector I must go after all cards!  The top right card is the batting average parallel to the top middle base card and is numbered 075/238.  The Fleer Futures card is a Black Gold parallel and is numbered 465/499.  The Fleer Mystique is actually a base card but apparently they were all numbered, this one 0048/2000.  Fleer was a little serial numbered crazy back in the day.

I also picked up a few Upper Deck cards including the duo up top of a base Black Diamond card and its die cut partner.  All of these cards bring the shine but I think the HG Stars of the System at the bottom wins my award for the favorite in this group.

Finally the last group from Topps and a couple oddballs.  I recently learned from Lifetime Topps Project  that these two parallels (HTA & Limited) were two of only three parallel sets from the 2002 Topps release - I still need the gold border.  Can you imagine a world with only 3 parallels!?  I have always been intrigued by the Topps Stars cards, another product I have never cracked.  I like both of these cards with the bottom left card being a gold parallel to 034/499.  The MLB Showdown reminds me of how few Giants I have from this set in my collection. The Vanguard card looks very nice and is a high quality card.

This group of 37 cards puts me over the halfway mark with 165/308 or 53.6%.  I think it is time to set up an eBay search for some of the more rare cards and see if I can add some "quality" to my quantity although I must say that Ben Petrick's career seemed to parallel a few years with some really nice base cards.  Happy collecting!