Winning the Retail Lottery

I recently brought home the last of my old boxes from my dad's house. One of the boxes contained my 6th grade yearbook.  Looking at my likes and dislikes section next to my name you could tell I was a basketball fan.  My likes included "Rodman, Bulls" whereas my dislikes were "LA Lakers, doing homework."

Nowadays, my interest in basketball (at least at the professional level) is all but gone.  Other than checking in on some players from my alma maters and seeing if the OKC Thunder are still title-less, I don't follow the sport.

That doesn't stop me from opening card packs, however.  My grocery store happened to have two untouched boxes of 2016-17 Panini Prizm. 

The boxes said they contained 1 autograph or memorabilia card on average so feeling the itch for some new wax, I grabbed three packs from the top box.  Amidst some base and prizm parallel cards was a gold parallel autograph of Patrick Patterson numbered out of 10! This was without a doubt my best retail pull ever.  

Patterson was the 14th overall pick in the 2010 NBA Draft.  He's not an all-star but he appears to be a decent player.  

The next night I was at the store again.  The two Prizm boxes remained virtually untouched.  Since I pulled what was likely the only auto out of the first box, I went for the second box hoping for some more luck.  This time I only grabbed two packs.  

One of the packs contained a teal wave parallel of Ben Simmons, numbered out of 25!  I knew that Ben Simmons was a big deal, being the #1 pick in the overall draft and signing an exclusive autograph deal with Upper Deck.  I didn't realize that his cards were so highly sought after.  On top of the parallel, I pulled his base rookie in the next pack.

Word came down Friday that Simmons is officially out for the rest of the season due to his foot injury.  He never played a regular season game this year.  With all the hype it will be interesting to see how well Simmons plays next year.  

A few days go by and I'm at the store again.  I had to check my boxes of Prizm and they were still rather full.  It's not too surprising as the Seattle area is mainly a football town with a lesser interest in the Mariners.  

I grabbed four more packs, two from each box.  This time I pulled another teal wave parallel! Another SN25 parallel! Kent Bazemore is not a big name but still a big pull!

I never thought I would have gotten so excited about basketball cards.  I couldn't believe my luck with all the great cards.  For now, these are my best retail pulls and will be hard to beat!