What is an E pack?

ePack is an online way to open packs that is available for certain Upper Deck products.

They have a FAQ:
https://www.upperdeckepack.com/Home/About

A new way to distribute trading cards that has really taken hold in the last 2 - 3 years. Don't confuse e-Packs (Electronic Packs) with strictly digital cards. E-Packs can be all digital, some physical and some digital, or all physical cards depending on the product.

The above link is to Upper Deck. UD appears to be very committed to e-Packs, but its not the only one. UD's policy on some major card titles seems to be to release traditional boxes, followed up by the e-Pack release after 90 days or so, which has the same cards. They can also do exclusive e-Pack titles, such as discussed in the Agent Carter thread, or sometimes include cards that didn't make the traditional boxes.

e-Packs are a game changer if they become the first choice to sell trading cards. I wish more card collectors here had questions about them and their buying/trading structure.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:
The above link is to Upper Deck. UD appears to be very committed to e-Packs, but its not the only one.

I believe ePack is a registered trade mark of Upper Deck. They are also the only manufacturer I am aware of that is doing any sort of online packs that contain physical cards. I don't believe any Upper Deck ePack products are digital only.

Topps has Card Trader apps, but those are digital only, and really are not comparable to ePack.

I followed the link and since there are daily offer signed up.

So let me make sure I understand

I buy a pack and it's stored digitally. I can trade the cards or sell them. If I want the physical card I pay a fee plus shipping and handling.

So what would happen if the company goes bankrupt, or gets hacked and your cards disappear. Or what happens if your computer or phone gets hacked?

quote:

Originally posted by Scorpiovamp:
I followed the link and since there are daily offer signed up.

Cool! I'm Webjon on there too, if you have any questions or what not.

quote:

Originally posted by Scorpiovamp:
I buy a pack and it's stored digitally. I can trade the cards or sell them. If I want the physical card I pay a fee plus shipping and handling.

Mostly correct, they don't allow direct selling on ePack, a lot of people find buyers on forums then complete the sale on ePack. Certain cards, if they are good for achievements, are worth more on ePack than they are on COMC or eBay. One tip -- if it's not a PC card leave it on ePack for future trades/sales.

Also, I don't think there is a fee to have the cards shipped to you, I'd need to check on that, but you do need to pay shipping, and if you want extras -- like all the cards in toploaders they charge for that too.

quote:

Originally posted by Scorpiovamp:
So what would happen if the company goes bankrupt, or gets hacked and your cards disappear. Or what happens if your computer or phone gets hacked?

Great questions, I don't know the answers to these. . .

e-pack is fun for certain releases, like Agent Carter, and folks who don’t have stores or shows near them it’s an alternative. I think it’s bad that Upper Deck basically competes against the brick and mortar stores that support them and make them following different rules for internet selling but that’s another discussion. Bottom line we each can make our own choices it’s getting tougher all the time and I can see a near future where Upper Deck no longer offers retail or hobby product but e-pack only I think it will happen and actually already has and Agent Carter sold out in a few days so here we go.

quote:

Originally posted by Scorpiovamp:
I followed the link and since there are daily offer signed up.

So let me make sure I understand

I buy a pack and it's stored digitally. I can trade the cards or sell them. If I want the physical card I pay a fee plus shipping and handling.

So what would happen if the company goes bankrupt, or gets hacked and your cards disappear. Or what happens if your computer or phone gets hacked?

If you buy only a pack, the only cards you will be able to transfer the chase cards. Epack has the base set be digital and requires you to combine multiple digital copies of a card in exchange for one variant base single (usually silver variant base card). The number of digital copies required to combine for a physical copy generally varies- Doctor Strange was 20 copies for a single silver base set single, Daredevil was only five copies, Alien was 10 copies IIRC, etc. it took me six boxes of Daredevil to get a complete 100 Card physical base set, and a case of Doctor Strange to get a full 50 Card base set. I bought two boxes of Alien and can transfer the autographs and chase sets, but the digital base will probably rot on the site until the site goes under. In general, epack is a good place to go for chase cards and not for base. Some sets like Marvel Annual are fun to go for the color wheel achievements which aren’t too hard to get, but outside of those sets there aren’t a lot of people chasing the base cards.

As webjon said, selling isn’t allowed on epack, but trading is. You can transfer the cards to COMC is you have an account and can sell the cards, though that usually is a race to the bottom. The person who posted that cards that are unredeemed and stay on epack will get you a lot more value than the ones transferred to COMC, so unless the card is going to the Pc, I would keep in on epack.

There is a $3.99 shipping charge plus $0.25 per card charge for economy shipping. The $0.25 fee per card will stay no matter the shipping method, both on epack and COMC. The only way around it is to buy the card on COMC and then have it shipped to you, where you would only have to pay for shipping. For example, a 100 Card base set for Daredevil will cost me at least $28.99 for economy shipping, with other faster options being more expensive. Of course, if you report the correct value, you will be forced to pay extra for insurance also (generally is value reported is over $50). This is why base set collecting on epack is not financially advantageous. Shipping the cards in toploaders is an extra $0.25 per card but they cut is a break by giving up a penny sleeve for free! (/sarcasm)

I’m not sure what would happen if the company went under. The assumption is that the cards are all ready at COMC given how fast the cards get transferred and can get shipped out and how similar the fee and shipping policies are. If UD went under I’d assume that there would be sometime to transfer everything to COMC before the website went under as it takes awhile for a company like UD to go bankrupt, but I don’t know what would happen if COMC went under or was hacked. In general, if the cards are intended for your PC, I would transfer them to COMC and have them held for free until you want a shipment posted or just have them sent out via epack directly and not risk a hack or the company going under. Again, the digital base would probably be a loss but you would protect the chase.

If your phone is lost/stolen/hacked, there shouldn’t be a problem since epack is cloud based and you log in via your phones web browser so it isn’t app based and tied to your phone. The problem would be if someone decided to steal your password and log in as you, but really if you are hacked, your epack account is probably one of the last things that a hacker would go for. Epack now only does payments via AMEX or PayPal so there is a form of two factor authentication to protect your financial info.

In short, epack is fun as long as you don’t mind all of the fees to actually get your cards (sales tax if you have a CA address, S/H, and the per card fee for shipping). Overall, i’ve Had fun buying during sales, doing sketch hunting and chasing epack exclusive chase sets. If you are a base hunter or OCD and needing to have every single card, the achievements will probably drive you nuts unless you pay big money right at the beginning.

Very balanced and informative post Riddler.

quote:

Originally posted by riddler_149:
Epack has the base set be digital and requires you to combine multiple digital copies of a card in exchange for one variant base single (usually silver variant base card).

Are the combined (physical) base on ePack always a variant from the ones that come out of hobby/retail packs?

quote:

Originally posted by webjon:

quote:

Originally posted by riddler_149:
Epack has the base set be digital and requires you to combine multiple digital copies of a card in exchange for one variant base single (usually silver variant base card).

Are the combined (physical) base on ePack always a variant from the ones that come out of hobby/retail packs?

At least in my experience, they have been some sort of parallel or variant. The retail Doctor Strange release had thick cardboard for the base set, while the epack base are regular thickness with a silver finish. All Doctor Strange parallel sets were the same- thick cards for retail and regular width for epack.

I also believe that, for Doctor Strange, when the digital cards are combined you receive a silver foil parallel. Then it was something like 5 silver parallel for a rainbow foil and five rainbow fouls for a red rainbow foil so to get all three base sets on epack you would need something like 620 digital base cards of each base to get one copy of the parallel set at all three levels or 31,000 digital base assuming perfect collation to get a 50 card base set at all three base levels. At this point, if you are like me, you just pretend that the silver set is the epack base set and the others are parallel sets unless you want to go down that rabbit hole.

As for Daredevil, the epack digital base has the same images as the retail version, but to get a physical card, you had to combine five base cards for a red tint parallel (which for confusion sake is different than the red foil parallel, though both a red tint and red foil set are required for the autograph achievement). The nice thing with Daredevil is that epack allows you to redeem a red tint set for a special film cell achievement Card, so you can keep the red tint parallel set and the achievement card. This is unlike other sets like Doctor Strange where when you combine the cards you lose them in exchange for the card you are combining for, which makes sets like Daredevil a lot easier to complete achievements for than Doctor Strange.

Those are the only two releases that I have bought both epack and retail for so they are the only ones I can speak with confidence about. By looking at the Thor Ragnarok and Spider-Man Homecoming cards on other people’s accounts, I assume that it is consistent across epack, so that a “true master set” will require both a retail base and an epack parallel/variant base set.

quote:

Originally posted by riddler_149:
Those are the only two releases that I have bought both epack and retail for so they are the only ones I can speak with confidence about. By looking at the Thor Ragnarok and Spider-Man Homecoming cards on other people’s accounts, I assume that it is consistent across epack, so that a “true master set” will require both a retail base and an epack parallel/variant base set.

I had no idea that the base set changed between the retail cards and the trailing e-Pack release. I just thought maybe a couple of exclusive cards might slip in after the traditional boxes packed out. And of course more hits would drop with the new wave, which effects supply and demand.

But that being the case, based on secondary market sales of completed sets if available, would the e-Pack parallel/variant base set be priced very much higher than the base set coming from regular boxes?

It certainly sounds like it takes a lot more work to do the e-Pack set, but also remember that Thor Ragnarok took more than one box to complete, so retail UD sets requiring multiple boxes are already on the premium card side. So are card collectors chasing one or the other or both types of UD base sets if they exist? Or are they collectors like me, who didn't even know that my Thor Ragnarok base set constructed from boxes even had another version?

I think there is a novelty factor, but I don't think it was replace buying a regular physical product. It's not fun to press a button to open a pack. I'll use it for the daily freepack.