Lots of Cardinals From the Quarry

You never know when something small is going to turn into something big.  There are examples all over the baseball card world.  Maybe you bought a few boxes of 2011 Topps Update years ago.  If you were lucky enough to pull a Mike Trout RC, you turned a very nice profit.  As a Cardinals fan, Randy Arozarena comes to mind.  Not just the relatively small trade that sent him to Tampa, but also the crazy jump in prices for his cards during the 2020 playoffs.  I usually do not trade any of my Cardinals personal collection, but I could not resist turning a $10 Topps Chrome auto into a $100 bill.  

A more recent example is a trade I completed with Johnny from Cards from the Quarry.  I had just started blogging in 2015 when he was slowing down.  Johnny fired things back up earlier this year with a some of his trademark Sunday PWE trade posts.  I claimed 1 Cardinals card that led to us exchanging a few emails and working out a large trade.  Well I guess it was large for me.  I believe I received a total of 65 cards, while I sent a mere 10 cards his way.  My cards arrived on Monday.  It has been fun going through them the last couple of nights and sorting all the goodies.

This is the card that started our trade, a 2020 Bowman Platinum purple card #ed to 250.  I was confident I had at least 1 Rockies card Johnny could use.  He found a small lot of Clint Barmes cards he needed, so I searched his Sportlots inventory and a list of  Cardinals he and found a great batch of Cardinals Johnny set along with the Thompson card.  

I am breaking with my routine of posting Altuve cards last because I am worried I would forget to show them.  There are a ton of Cardinals cards to get to.  This brings my son's collection to 385 Atluve cards.  The 2014 Red Hot Foil  was by far his favorite.  

The only base cards in the lot were these 4 from 2015 Elite Extra Edition.  Johnny just left me 1 shy of completing the team set.  

Moving on to some Topps parallels and an Opening Day blue foil DeJong card.  I love added older cards like the 2014 Neshek.  Without card shows, these are getting tougher to find.

A couple of Bowman inserts including a Silver Molina parallel along with a Finest Lou Brock.  I hate to label anyone who was drafted a failure, but Nick Plummer is pretty close.  He was the 23rd overall pick in 2015.  Before the covid hit last year, he had only played 1 season above low class A.  At 25 years old, his clock is running out.

Here we have 2 cards with a pair of teammates.  The Stadium Club looks much better.  From the high 5 to the neon green arm sleeve, it has a lot going on.  The Heritage insert is a nice idea, but at least show more of Yadi than the back of his uniform.

I am not sure how many people buy Topps Gallery since it has became a mostly online product, but you do not see very many parallels around.  The DeJong is a canvas parallel, the Yadi a wood version.

You do see plenty of Topps Chrome refractors floating around.  I have a soft spot for the pink ones like the Diaz even though the scan looks purple.  Topps Fire does not get a lot of love, but I have always liked it.  The Flame parallels are sharp, as are the Gold Minted ones.

I will finish of the Topps portion of the trade with a couple of relics.  Edmonds has a ton of jersey/bat cards from the early 2000s.  This is my 10th.  The 2020 Goldy coin card is super thick.  I am not even sure I have a top loader big enough for it.  

I received a good dose of Panini branded inserts also.  Here are different purple parallels along with a Holo Piscotty.  Those Holo cards can be tough to spot if you do not have the base card to compare it to.

Select and Prizm were 2 of the most attractive brands in 2020.  The Select Scope cards can make you dizzy if you stare at them long enough.  The many shades of Prizm include purple and silver wave.  

2020 Diamond Kings had some nice looking parallels as well.  Panini did a good job of hiding the logos on these, not so much on the Musial framed red.  The 2019 red Tyler O'Neill is just the start of the colored Donruss parallels.  

Johnny either opened a ton of 2020 Donruss or tried to complete a master set, as he sent a large stack of various colored Cardinals.

Blue

Purple

Red

Pink

Orange

Yellow

Independence Day

Baby Shark

That is a ton of different variations.  I will be adding all the missing cards from each set to my TCDB want list.  Should be fun to see how many team sets I can complete.  

Last but not least are some 2020 insert parallels.  At the top is a rapture and silver Goldscmidt.  Both cards on the bottom are pink fireworks cards.  Wow that was a long post, but I wanted to show everything from this awesome trade.   Thanks again goes out to Johnny.  I am pretty sure I owe him more Rockies.