I think it's incidental to [the bug](https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/issues/2111#issuecomment-36565102), which was [introduced in `BalancedCard.__getitem__`](https://github.com/gittip/www.gittip.com/pull/2112/files#diff-e209720f56e630df367b5429528148bbL292). Simplifying the way things are accessed in `BalancedThing`s reduces the chance of this happening in the future.