Topps Now Samurai Japan Parallels

I had a surprise waiting for me when I got home from work yesterday - two packages from Topps.  I had no idea what these were as I had received all 16 of the Topps Now Samurai Japan cards from Topps a few weeks ago and while I had just ordered the Samurai Japan team set the other day, I wasn't expecting to see that until the first half of February at the earliest.

What I discovered when I opened the packages is that Topps had sent me parallel cards for 13 of the 16 Samurai Japan cards!  There were six in one package and seven in the other.  I have no idea why Topps sent me these but I'm not going to ask too many questions.  

From what I've gathered from googling, Topps apparently surprises people who buy Topps Now cards with the occasional parallel.  13 parallels seems kind of excessive as an RAK but I'll take it.  Also it seems like normally the parallel replaces the base card in the order but they sent me the parallels in addition to the base cards,  

All the parallels were serially numbered.  There were seven blue ones (numbered to 49), five purple ones (numbered to 25) and one red one (numbered to 10).  This matches the parallels that this article says exist for the 2022 Topps Now cards - there are apparently also an orange (numbered to 5) and gold (1 of 1) parallel that are possible as well - I assume these exist for the Samurai Japan cards as well.

What's kind of cool is that I have card "01" for five of the cards - Shugo Maki, Tomoya Mori, Taisei Ota, Kensuke Kondoh and Hiromi Itoh.  What's disappointing is that the three cards they didn't send me parallels of include Roki Sasaki and one of the Munetaka Murakami cards (along with Soichiro Yamazaki).  But I can't complain too much...

Here's what the fronts of all the cards look like (the backs look identical to the base cards):

#001

#002

#003

#004

#005

#006

#009

#010

#011

#012

#014

#015

#016

So, thank you, Topps, for the nice surprise!  I'm still going to call you out on things you do poorly but please feel free to try to bribe me some more!