Twenty Ten Cardinals Surprise

In what would certainly count as a surprise package in my world, reader Steve from ID became the first person to send me 2010 Cardinals cards. In most trade posts, I'll just select a handful of cards that were noteworthy to me or at least produced some sort of thought in me that I felt could be written about. However, set-building trades aside, I'm not sure that anyone has ever sent me a package where every single card was something I needed until now.

Here's my first 2010 Topps Gold Cardinals card. Lugo wasn't a terrible pickup for the Cardinals last year as it allowed them to part ways with Chris Duncan to give him a new start somewhere else and even gave them an additional contract year for Julio. He's a great low-cost backup infielder on a team that uses its reserve players almost as often as its regular starters.

This Pujols '51 Red Back mini becomes the second retail exclusive card that I've pulled. Are there more Cardinals to be had there? I don't have checklists handy at the moment, but I'm sort of hoping that Pujols and Dizzy Dean are it.

I know that not everyone appreciates a Topps League Leaders card, but I kind of like them in some weird way. I guess they remind me of 1984 Topps.

Albert Pujols is good at baseball.

I'd like to see Wainwright and Carpenter go into this season with chips on their shoulders and just flat out dominate the National League. I'm still pretty bitter about the whole Cy Young Award debacle, although awards are becoming more and more meaningless.

As much as it is fun to get 3 insert cards per $1.99 pack, I think that Topps could have dropped at least one of the insert sets. There isn't a whole lot of difference to me between the Topps Town design and the Peak Performance design.

Here's one less Card My Mom Threw Out to retrieve. This is the more common version and not the reprint back style.

I guess the only reason that the Peak Performance insert set exists is to provide a base for the Peak Performance relic cards that I've seen while browsing around.

Thanks again to Steve, who should be receiving a return pack of Braves in the near future.