A while back, hiflew over at Cards from the Quarry expressed an interest in the 1986-design cards from 2014 Topps Archives. I have purchased a fair amount of that product and sent the doubles I had from the set his way. In return he sent me a package that touched on many of my player and team collections. Headlining the package was the above white-framed parallel from this year's Gypsy Queen product. While the base Gypsy Queen cards tend to leave me a bit cold, I think the frames really add a lot to the cards and look quite nice. But outside of participating in a 5-box online break a couple of months ago I haven't gone out of my way to chase down any of the cards. It was nice to get this card that I otherwise might have missed out on.
I don't have a lot of Josh Reddick's earlier stuff from his time with the Red Sox, which makes it nice to pick up some of his Rookie Cards, like this one from Bowman. I am pretty sure I didn't have this Hakeem Olajuwon card, either, as when I went through my Olajuwon cards a while back I was surprised at how many base cards of his I was missing.
I didn't have any of the Camo parallels from Panini's Prizm product. Even without logos, this Jose Bautista card is pretty sweet. I'm surprised that Panini chose to use a photo with team members in the background, as that means they had to paint out more logos. Topps would have just zoomed the photo way in to avoid it.
The rainbow-era Astros got some love in this package, with a pair of 1980 Topps cards and some early 90's stuff in the form of a Ken Forsch Swell Baseball Greats card from 1990 and a 1991 Topps Stadium Club card featuring a slightly-less-rainbowy-than-the-rest Curt Schilling.
Another player collection got some representation, with Mark Reynolds being shown both batting and fielding. It's surprising that the ball appears in that top card. I wonder if Topps' zoom button was broken on that photo? Jose Bautista also makes another appearance on an insert from 2012 Topps.
Josh Reddick makes a couple more appearances wearing a minor league uniform and his Oakland A's garb, followed up by a few more members of the Houston Rockets. The most notable Rocket in the stack is Clyde Drexler, who glided his way to a berth in the Hall of Fame along with an NBA Championship, a spot on the 1992 Dream Team, and numerous individual awards and accolades.
Finishing off the trade package are a couple of team lots from the Astros and Mariners, spanning many sets and decades. There is a little of everything here. I feel a little bit like those folks who try to collect every card of specific teams are completely nuts, as even just collecting the base cards from every product and every team would be ridiculously hard. There are sets here that I've never even heard of.
This was a pretty cool trade package, and it was good to get something neat in return for a bunch of doubles that were sitting in my Archives stack. Thanks, hiflew!
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