Finding Gold (...I Mean Purple!) at Chipotle

I've always been a sucker for Chipotle.  I had never even known the place existed until I went to college and one of my good friends there ranted and raved about it.  The closest one to us (or at least the most convenient one) was just under an hour away in Pittsburgh.  I eventually was dragged along one night and experienced the wonder of a what burritos should always taste like... perhaps that's an overstatement, but that's not important.

What IS important is how Chipotle relates to baseball cards.  Sit back fine sir or madam and have a listen.

A while back, Chipotle was in the news for creating the newest E Coli scare.  Apparently out of the millions upon millions of burritos they serve in a year, a batch of meat went bad and got germy.  Yeah... it's gross, but it's not going to stop me from occasionally enjoying their food.  In any case, because of this bad publicity Chipotle ended up shutting down all their restaurants for part of a day.  They put up signs on the door saying they were sorry and to send them a text to get a free burrito.  I suppose you can imagine what happened...

Naturally, everyone and their mother heard about this great promotion (except you, fellow reader... except you)!  Hooray!  I obviously texted the number and, true to their word, Chipotle sent a voucher back for free food.

One day after work I went to redeem said voucher.  The Chipotle that made the most sense to go to happened to be in a big lot of other stores; one of those lots with the restaurants out front and a bunch of retail stores in back.  I got my burrito and got in my car to take it home when I noticed a lady rolling a shopping cart towards a car.  It looked a bit like this except the box was even bigger:

I think it was some kind of baby's crib or something to that effect.  In any case, she was by herself, and I could not imagine how she even got the thing into the shopping cart let alone how she planned on getting it in her SUV.  I parked my car next to her and proceeded to help her with the clunky object.  Good deed of the day done, she thanked me and I started back to my car when I noticed one other thing in her cart.  A small pack of baseball cards containing 2016 Topps Series 1 cards.  It had an advertisement on it for PURPLE CARDS.  That's when I realized where I was.  I had helped a lady that was coming out of Toys R Us... a store that I thought didn't even exist in Connecticut.

I had seen/heard about these purple parallels from other bloggers, so I knew they existed, but I didn't really heavily consider chasing any of them.  I was in a parking lot... with a Toys R Us... a store that holds the magic key to PURPLE CARDS!  ...and here I said I wouldn't buy any flagship this year... well I caved.

Here's what they look like in case you haven't seen them.  I'm a bit underwhelmed to be honest, but I think I still do like them better than just your normal base card.

One thing I realized when writing up this post is that if you put two 2016 cards side-by-side like so, they actually look pretty neat...

...as opposed to when you arrange them as above.  These look really dumb.  Can you tell that I have a whole heck of a lot to say about 2016 flagship???

By far the best of the purple parallels that I got.  My scanner doesn't like the shinny tint that they put on the nameplates, so you'll just have to recognize everybody.

Back to how these cards should be arranged side by side.  The way these purple parallels worked out makes the cards have a very glaring and shuddery feel if the primary uniform color doesn't "mesh" with purple.  For example, blue and purple clash; that Pillar card feels like the purple immediately needs to go.

Probably my favorite looking purple parallel of the bunch.  I guess that's because everything seems to go with grey.  I also got an Andrew Miller hotpack!  The card on the right is a rainbow refractor.

I guess since this is my first time really looking at 2016 flagship, I can talk about the inserts a bit.  The above: boring.

These are actually of a bit of interest to me.  I really haven't heavily collected anything except Allen & Ginter, so I'm seeing a bunch of Topps rookie cards for pretty close to the first time.  I absolutely was collecting when that Trout card came out, but I certainly don't have a copy for myself.

I got an insert of a person named Thony Riz.  I can only assume that's the little kid waiting for his ball to get signed.  What does this have to do with Wrigley Field?

The perspectives cards are interesting.  I really like the Yadi and I don't really understand the Nolan Ryan.  I've also read many different opinions about these cards.  Many seem to hate the font used for the title and player name.  I'm personally a bit ambivalent, but I really tend to like where they decided to put the words (all over the place).  I think this is a pretty neat idea that Topps could potentially run with a bit more.

Oh, a Topps Bunt promo that I won't use.  I started an account last year, but it became too much of a time sync for me.

Moral of the story: Help ladies with heavy objects.  They will help you find cards.

Maybe next time I help somebody, they'll be outside a Wal-Mart with a Marketside Pizza...