Stop the Insanity part 2 or the Topps Bunt edition

I'm a lover of history.  World history, American history, Baseball history, even my own history. So when I got a twitter suggestion to follow the Digital Card Values I was intrigued.  Hold on the history part will come into play in a minute.

Topps Bunt Sparky Anderson Signature Card

I play Topps Bunt and that led me to playing Topps Punt and Kick as well.  If you don't know what those are they are digital trading card apps.  The premise is pretty simple you download the app, Topps gives you some coins, you buy some digital card packs. You want more coins you can to tasks on Tapjoy or just buy them.  You get daily coins and a weekly bonus for logging in 7 days in a row.  Of course packs aren't cheap and the coins you get is limited, so of course Topps wants you to buy more coins, that's how it makes money.  There is also a game involved, much like fantasy baseball and football.  You add cards from your inventory and if the player does something you get points, earn awards and more coins.  You can also trade to complete sets for more coins and trading is half the fun.

So it's not hard to imagine that of course people have started to sell these digital cards on ebay.  Not only that, but people are buying them and paying some big bucks.  Paying for cards that don't play in the game and don't really exist.

This reminds me of, here's the history part, of the Dutch tulip craze of the 1600's.  Don't know what that is, here's a wiki page.  I guess people have way too much money and way to much time on their hands.

Don't get me wrong I like the Bunt app and I like trading and playing the game. And Topps has the opportunity to try out all sorts of ideas for cards that really don't cost it more than the designer and coders time.

 But I've never purchased coins and I'm sure not going to buy 0 and 1's off of ebay.  Seriously check out the site and the prices some of these cards are going for.  I really don't understand it.  Maybe you can explain it to me.

cb out

I tried Topps Bunt.... and I liked it.

I"ll be honest Topps isn't know for their acumen with technology and social media in general. As a matter of fact Topps treats a lot of it's interactive endevours like a child who is super excited over a new toy when it's new and then quickly loses interest and it sits in the corner never to be played with again, ahem, eTopps, the Topps Blog, Topps Town, and the Topps website being a source of useful information.

So I was leery when Topps started it's foray into apps.  But I finally broke down this year and decided to give Topps Bunt a try.  And I'm actually kind of addicted to it.

For those of you who don't know what the Topps Bunt app is, it's basically a mix between  digital baseball cards and fantasy baseball, with a little of the old sitting around with your friends trading your doubles for cards you need.

When you sign up you get a big chunk of coins, which are used to buy packs.  There are various types of packs with varying about of cards, inserts, and parallels. You get more coins for logging in daily and you can also buy coins if you are one of those people who does in app purchases.

There are 5 kinds of base cards.  The base.

Here's what the "back" looks like.

Green Uncommon

Red Rare

Silver Scarce

And Gold Super Rare

There are also all kinds of different inserts that are found in certain packs and offered usually for only a limited time. Here's Jered Weavers Heritage insert

James Loney 1974 Archives insert

And Matt Harvey's Saberstars card

Another big focus on the game is playing your cards in a sort of fantasy baseball like game.

As you play you accrue weekly points and there are a ton of different achievement awards to win as well.

Another big part of the app is trading.  You select cards you want and then cards you want to trade and select 5 trading partners and wait to either have your traded accepted, declined or they counter offer.

There is also a social aspect of the game, but I have yet to add anyone.

If anyone out there playing around on the app and wants to add me as a friend my user name is cynicalbuddha.

Anyone else out there using the Bunt app. Anyone else like it?

cb out