A Mariners Trifecta- Dustin Ackley

Along with my Ken Griffey Jr. collection I have a nice Seattle Mariners collection, while not as big as my Griffey collection it is still a nice little addition. Jay Buhner is my second favorite Mariner after Griffey but I am also catching up with some of the young guys that the team is being built around now. Dustin Ackley and Mike Zunino are my main focus of the modern team and I am working on picking up a trifecta of each. I finally completed an Ackley trifecta, but I am still working on the Zunino one though.

Dustin Ackley was drafted by the Mariners in the 2009 MLB Draft out of the University of North Carolina as the #2 pick behind Strasburg. He made his debut for the Mariners following a June 2011 call up at Second Base but has since moved to Left Field following the Cano trade in 2013.

He showed up in Minor League sets in 2009 like 2009 TriStar Prospects and 2009 Donruss EEE but his first cards in a Mariners uniform didn’t appear until the 2010 releases. I have a couple of his rookie cards but I am quite partial to his 2010 Bowman card #BP89

I recently added a nice Ackley autograph to my collection, a 2010 TriStar Obak autograph #/125. I actually didn’t even realize it was numbered until I had scanned it in. A bit odd that TriStar used the same exact image on his Obak card that Topps used on his Bowman card, pretty lazy TriStar.

 

The final piece of the trifecta I picked up today, a 2013 Topps Allen & Ginter’s framed relic

 

I am pretty excited about this, but I think at this time making a quintfecta (RC, auto, jersey relic, patch and printing plate) is going to be pretty difficult. Ackley is a solid player but he is surrounded by popular players like King Felix and Robinson Cano along with a strong young group of prospects like Mike Zunino, Austin Jackson and Taijuan Walker so he ends up getting buried in the Mariners popularity contest. This gets him on to the base checklist of sets but when it comes to the upper end products that include patches and printing plates he doesn’t make the cut as often so options for these hits are more difficult to find at a reasonable price.