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Topps “Bunt 20” (E-Card) Year in Review

Now that 2020 is over, and with it my first full year using Topps Bunt digital cards on my smartphone, I wanted to share two things: (1) what I thought were Bunt 20’s most noteworthy developments regarding the cards themselves; and (2) some things I learned about managing one’s cards and account.

Card-Related Developments

One obvious thing that stood out to me was the large number of card versions that were created for some players (below, Vladimir Guerrero, Jr.). This trend may well have begun prior to 2020, but as I said, it really captured my attention in 2020. A larger theme within the sports-card community is the increasing prominence of graphic artists in designing ever-more creative products.* This seems to me a likely explanation for all the versions of player cards.

Something I’m pretty sure originated in 2020 was “Free Pack Friday, with a nice-looking card of a leading player marking the date. These are some of my favorites…

Another new feature was the extension of the “Topps Now” concept to Bunt. Shown below (left) is a Now card for the September 13, 2020 no-hitter pitched by the Cubs’ Alec Mills. Other current events depicted in Bunt cards (although not apparently under the “Topps Now” heading) were the Dodgers’ World Series championships and Adam Wainwright’s receipt of the Roberto Clemente award for service to one’s community.

One last feature I enjoyed — though not unique to 2020 — were the retro cards of all-time greats, including two of the Hall of Famers who died in 2020 (Gibson and Kaline).

Managing One’s Cards and Account

Next, I discuss some issues from the user’s point of view in managing one’s cards and account (for background on some of Bunt’s features, see this earlier posting of mine).

I remain content to use the free gold coins as my Bunt currency and, therefore, I have maintained my record of not spending a single penny of my own. However, I did have my first experience getting to spend diamonds (which normally must first be purchased with actual cash).

Over the summer, Topps held a “make your own baseball card” contest. Users could go to a website and use the camera on their computer to take their own photograph, which Topps inserted into a baseball-card template. (Topps announces these kind of Bunt activities on its Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/officialtoppsbunt/ )

Users must supply their own jersey, as I did, if they want to be photographed in one. I chose number 62 for my year of birth and second-base as my position, as I once made a good defensive play at second in an intramural softball game in college.

For making my own card, I received a reward of diamonds, 150 of them, if I recall correctly. I don’t know if diamonds were given to everyone who participated in card-making, or just some people. As I learned, the packs of cards one can buy with diamonds contain more cards than the ones available for gold coins. Also, diamond packs are guaranteed to contain some minimum number of special cards, as opposed to gold-card packs, which carry only a small probability of containing a special card.

Two other things I learned more about were “Crafting” and “Missions.” Crafting might be better termed “Exchanging,” as one can give up two Tier 1 cards to receive a random Tier 2 card, give up two Tier 2 cards to receive a random Tier 3 card, and so forth, up to exchanging Tier 4 cards for a Tier 5 one. I lack a good understanding of what qualifies a card for a certain tier. In the comments to my earlier post, someone suggested crafting as a way to rid oneself of the voluminous unwanted duplicates one inevitably accumulates. In principle, yes, but once someone has accumulated thousands of cards, crafting to cull one’s collection would take too long.

Missions award supplemental gold coins for accomplishing small tasks, such as acquiring a certain number of cards, engaging in crafting, or initiating a trade. Rather than actively pursuing these goals, I take a totally passive approach to missions. Every few weeks, I check the missions area and see if I have inadvertently satisfied some of the tasks.

I still have not initiated any trades, nor I have I tried to learn the meaning of the point values on the back of some of the cards.

One final piece of trivia: Statistics show the Bunt app to be downloaded fewer than 5,000 times per month. Bunt may not be setting the nation afire, but I enjoy it.

*The SABR Baseball Cards Committee hosted a Zoom meeting on this topic (June 28, 2020). Here is the link to a YouTube video of the event.

Topps “Bunt 20” E-Cards Are Here

The Topps “Bunt 20” smartphone app for digital/electronic baseball cards is here, replacing “Bunt 19.”

I am a latecomer to Bunt. Even though it has been around since 2012, I didn’t even know of the app’s existence until December 2019, when I read a posting about it by Nick Vossbrink here on the SABR Baseball Cards Blog (and a write-up by Jenny Miller that Nick linked to).

Once I joined in December 2019, though, I became a regular user. I initially was going on daily, as one received gold coins—the free currency for acquiring cards—every day, plus bonus amounts for activity every seven consecutive days. Once my gold-coin total started exceeding 100,000 and my card collection approached 2,000, however, I cut back to going on every two or three days.

Like Jenny, I have not spent any of my own money on Bunt, relying on gold coins. Diamonds, which can be exchanged for apparently more ritzy products, carry a fee. I have simple tastes, enjoying the sharp photograph quality of Bunt cards and the process of collecting by team. Other than trying a couple of trades (which failed), I have not gotten into any of the more elaborate aspects of Bunt, such as its fantasy-type games.

Anyway, I started wondering recently when (and how) the transition from Bunt 19 to Bunt 20 would occur. Last Friday, March 13, it happened. When I tapped the Bunt 19 app on my phone, it said the Bunt 20 reader was ready for download.

Bunt 20 features some changes compared to Bunt 19. Users can claim gold coins not only immediately upon entering the app, but also after waiting periods (e.g., 10 minutes or 1 hour). One can also claim a “Mystery Box” upon entering, which basically just seems to be a small number of cards. I’m sure there are additional differences between Bunt 20 and 19, which I’ll notice after additional use.

One thing that took me a while to get used to when I first started using Bunt is the probabilistic nature of some of the special deals in the “store.” You’ll see a feature advertised, such as cards with photos from Players’ Weekend or historical greats, but when you buy a packet, there may be one or none of the thematic cards.

My least favorite aspect of Bunt is the large amount of duplicate cards you get. They clutter up your team-by-team collections (if you choose to organize your digital cards that way) and, unless you want to use them for trading, they serve no useful purpose. I am not aware of any way to delete duplicate cards.

Ultimately, for its cost—which is nothing, unless one wants to purchase diamonds and fancier cards—Bunt is definitely a fun way to fill some down time.

A Summer Project Aiming to Yield a “C”

As a Cubs fan, I’ve maintained a small baseball-card collection of the team’s players. Some are from my and my brother’s childhood collection in the late 1960s and early 1970s, others are from store-bought packs in recent years, and still others are from card-dealer shops. Until this year, I just kept these cards laying around. One day last spring, however, I looked at the roundtable in my office and was inspired.

I realized that I could use the shape of the table to organize a display of cards and, with some cardholder sleeves, a scissors, and some extra-clear Scotch tape, make a huge Cubs “C” out of Cubs baseball cards. The first thing I did was get a bunch of standard 3 X 3 vinyl cardholder sheets. I then cut each vinyl sheet vertically into three separate columns, each holding three cards.

I then temporarily attached each column (already filled with cards) to the table, so that the straight edge of the outermost card fit as closely as possible with the curved edge of the table. I used masking tape to keep the first column (and every few columns thereafter) in place. I used small pieces of Scotch tape to connect adjacent columns to each other, so that all the columns would eventually form one single piece.

Note that the cards touching the outer edge of the table will be fully visible without being “eclipsed” by adjacent cards. The cards midway down in each column will be slightly eclipsed by the neighboring cards, and the cards nearest the center of the table will have nearly half of their surface eclipsed by neighboring cards. I therefore decided to reserve the outermost slots for the most prominent Cubs (Ernie Banks, Ron Santo, and Jake Arrieta, as shown above), with less well-known players generally confined to the innermost layer. Because so much of each innermost card was obscured, it was a real challenge making sure nobody’s face got cut off!

More exciting than creating the structure to hold the cards, of course, was acquiring the necessary cards themselves. Of the 120 cards (40 columns of three) needed to fill in the slots, I probably had only one-third that many at the start. A couple of trips to a local card store brought up my total somewhat, but to finish the project by the end of the summer, I also needed to shop online. I had two main guidelines for which players’ cards to obtain: (1) I wanted to have a card of every member of the 2016 World Series championship team (including manager Joe Maddon); and (2) I wanted to have cards for who would be considered every significant Cub of the last 50 years. Nearly all of the cards I purchased at the stores and over the Internet cost between 40-50 cents. Occasionally I had to splurge for cards worth $1 or so!

Most days during the summer, I put in 10-15 minutes of work on the project, although as things neared completion I put in longer stints. The circle began to grow, as illustrated in the near-complete design in the following picture. Most players appear only once in the “C,” but of those who appear multiple times, their cards are always from different years. Hence, there are no exact duplicates in the “C.” There are at least three Ron Santo cards in the mix.

One tricky issue is that, if I placed the tops of the baseball cards (i.e., where the players’ heads were) by the edge of the table all the way around, the cards at the bottom of the “C” would be upside-down. What I did, therefore, was change the orientation of the cards halfway through the “C” (after 20 columns). This is illustrated in the next two images, one a schematic of the process and the other, a close-up of the actual cards.

By switching after 20 columns from having the players’ heads toward the outer edge of the table to having their feet toward the outer edge, players at the top and bottom of the “C” came out rightside-up.

Once all the card slots were filled and the columns taped together, it was time to apply a red cardboard background to the design. I cut up a bunch of red rectangles and linked them together underneath the baseball cards. I used a lot of masking tape on the underside of the red cardboard to keep the pieces connected in a sturdy manner, and I used double-sided Scotch tape to affix the baseball-card part to the underlying cardboard.

Finally, it was time to place the “C” on one of the walls in my office, which I accomplished using red push-pin tacks at various points in the red outline.

I feel I largely accomplished my mission to include all of the significant Cubs of the past 50 years. Hall of Famers Ernie Banks, Andre “Hawk” Dawson, Leo Durocher (manager), Fergie Jenkins, Greg Maddux, Ryne Sandberg, Ron Santo, Bruce Sutter, and Billy Williams all appear in the “C.”

All-Star players and fan favorites of the different decades also appear. A non-comprehensive list of the players in the “C” includes:

Randy Hundley, Glenn Beckert, and Don Kessinger, who bridged the 1960s and ’70s; along with their teammate Jim Hickman, a trivia-question answer as the player whose hit led to Pete Rose’s run-scoring collision with catcher Ray Fosse to end the 1970 All-Star Game.
1970s favorites Rick Reuschel (1972-1981, 1983-1984) and Manny Trillo (1975-1978 and 1986-1988). They are among the Cubs whose names are referenced in the play “Bleacher Bums.”
Star 1980s pitchers Rick Sutcliffe and Lee Smith, and catcher Jody Davis.
1990s mainstay Mark Grace, and Kerry Wood, who came on spectacularly in 1998 and pitched all or parts of 12 seasons on the North Side.
Mark Prior, Ryan Dempster, Aramis Ramirez, and Derrek Lee of the 2000-aughts.
Joe Girardi, who came from Northwestern University to play two stints with the Cubs (1989-1992 and 2000-2002).

Sammy Sosa, though tainted by steroids, is included, as are three players who will probably best be remembered for defensive difficulties on particular plays: Moises Alou, involved in the Steve Bartman play vs. Florida in the 2003 NLCS; Leon “Bull” Durham, who let a key grounder go through his legs in the 1984 NLCS vs. San Diego; and Don Young, who failed to catch a couple of fly balls in a crucial 1969 series vs. the Mets. As bitter as some of the memories involving these players are, they are still very much a part of modern Cubs history. So is Keith Moreland, who is mentioned (not favorably) in the classic Steve Goodman song, “A Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request.”

A couple of cards exceeded the scope of the past 50 years: Joey Amalfitano (Cubs player 1964-1967, coach 1967–1971 and 1978–1979, and manager 1979-1981), and a reissued Frank Chance (1898-1912) of “Tinker to Evers to Chance” fame.

In reflecting on whether I missed some players I should have included, one that came to mind was Bill “Mad Dog” Madlock. His Cubs’ stint was brief (1974-1976), but it included two National League batting titles. My Texas Tech colleague and fellow Cubs fanatic Michael O’Boyle suggested I add Dave Kingman.

Also, if 2018 late-season acquisitions Cole Hamels and Daniel Murphy keep up their hot play, I’ll have to add them (Yu Darvish remains an open question). The nice thing about the cardholder sleeves I used is that I should be able to change some of the players in the “C” without much problem.

I would think fans of other teams could create similar displays. However, logos featuring letters with diagonal components (such as “A” or “M”) would probably be harder to bring about.

Teachers can even use the story of the baseball-card “C” to illustrate the formula for the circumference of a circle (2 * pi * r). The table’s diameter is 46 inches (to the precision I could measure it), so its radius is 23 inches. The formula yields a circumference of 144.5 inches. My “C” did not, of course, form a full circle, but I determined that it would take the widths of approximately 51 cards (compared to the 40 comprising the “C”) to complete the circle along the table’s edge. With each card having a width of approximately 2 3/4 inches, summing the card-widths around the table yields 140.25 inches. The difference between the actual circumference of the table (144.5) and the approximation by baseball cards (140.25) stems from the cards’ straight-edge widths being an imperfect fit for the table’s curved edge. A mathematical principle states that the match would improve as each baseball card (hypothetically) got narrower.

Topps “Now” Card Program

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As Mark wrote about in Entry 4 of his 10-part series on the Topps baseball-card monopoly, a breakthrough in card design – although not always executed well at first – was the introduction of action photography in 1971.

It took 45 years, but Topps found a way to enhance the experience of viewing action cards, by letting fans choose the specific plays they wanted to immortalize, and do so with quick turnaround from order to delivery.

In 2016, Topps began its “Now” program, allowing fans to order specially made cards capturing action images of noteworthy events on the diamond, generally no-hitters and important home-runs. The idea is that, once a significant (in some fans’ minds, at least) development occurs, customers have 24 hours to go online and purchase an action-shot card of the milestone (as long as Topps has decided to make one).

I first heard of the Now program via this article on the runaway demand for a Now card of Bartolo Colon hitting his first major-league homer on May 7. According to the article, Topps “sold 8,826 cards of the 42-year-old pitcher hitting a home run on Saturday. The card went on sale at 11:30 a.m. ET on Sunday and stopped production exactly 24 hours later.”

Before the Colon card, the biggest-selling card (Jake Arrieta’s second career no-hitter) had attracted 1,808 purchases.

In August 2016, the sales figure for the Colon homer card was eclipsed by the Now card for Ichiro’s 3,000th hit, which sold 11,550 copies.

As a Cubs fan, I decided to look into Now cards commemorating the team’s World Series victory. Topps made several individual cards and sets available, with a one-week ordering window instead of the usual 24 hours.

I zeroed in on a single card, showing the Cubs’ celebratory gathering in the infield, immediately following the final out, which carried a $9.99 price tag. I’m pretty frugal, so $10 for one baseball card seemed a lot. But then I asked myself, “How often do the Cubs win the World Series?” and the decision to purchase a card became obvious.

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The card took about two weeks to arrive and came enclosed in a clear plastic case, not a flat one, but one big enough to hold a deck of playing cards. The back of the card contained a paragraph-length summary of the series, with an emphasis on Game 7. I would have preferred a more data-laden back (like regular baseball cards), such as a listing of scores of all of the Cubs’ 2016 post-season games. I can’t complain, though.

The Now program seems like an excellent way for fans to celebrate their favorite players’ and teams’ accomplishments, including those on the quirkier side, such as when a certain aging, not-so-svelte pitcher goes deep.