I might have not seen it otherwise, but I decided to go on my Twitter 'for you' tab rather than the 'following' tab and saw Tweets about collectors getting email notifications from Topps, where their April entries were invalid - apparently you have to get your entries in by 1:00 a.m. / 4:00 a.m. the date of the game.
I entered at least several codes and won some cards in 2021, but maybe my personal interest had died down - where I may not have found as many code cards in the wild.
I was fired up when I 'won' an Austin Riley HR Challenge card last month- after learning about this news, I had to check whether my entry was affected and go figure, it was a non-winner due to this condition in their terms and conditions.
I always thought the deadline to enter a code card was anytime up to first pitch - where it was no problem entering a code the morning of or hours before a game was to begin.
Even if there was a little instinctive doubt about entering it in a timely manner as opposed to being proactive [at least the day before or before the deadline] - I didn't think I was canceling out a potential winning prize card by having entered the code when I did.
Despite the complaints on Twitter, I don't think Topps is going retroactively do anything - I had a code card for Adley Rutschman I was thinking on entering for Opening Day, but got lazy.
I'm not sure the time I entered the Rutschman code for another game and wondered if I would have had a non-winner even if he'd hit a home run - where I probably would have entered the code the day of the game, past the 1 a.m. / 4 a.m. deadline.
I am bummed I'm not going to be getting a winning HR Challenge card, but it was going to take 4-6 months to get one lousy card that maybe worth $4 of a player I'm not as emotionally invested in - because they sent this mean email invalidating winning Topps Home Run Challenge entries for April, I wonder whether I stop buying anymore Topps product, even though they are the only game in town for baseball cards.