Just saw this announcement from this morning.

Didn’t see it until UD sent out this announcement:

Attention e-Pack Collectors,

The Upper Deck e-Pack® Team would like to provide an update involving your collectibles. After the conclusion of the collaboration, rest assured that you will still be able to engage with your existing Marvel & Disney collection, as well as any other e-Pack collectors’ Marvel & Disney items that can be found on e-Pack, in the following ways:

Store your Marvel & Disney items on Upper Deck e-Pack for as long as you would like
Ship physical Marvel & Disney items
Transfer applicable physical Marvel & Disney items to a linked COMC account
Complete achievements for, and involving, Marvel & Disney items
Combine multiple copies of Marvel & Disney trading cards to earn e-Pack exclusive parallels
Trade Marvel & Disney items for anything found on the e-Pack marketplace

Links to the announcement

https://www.fanaticsinc.com/pr...r-wars-collaboration

At least now UD can't force dealers to take their Hockey junk if they want Marvel cases in their shop.

Personally if it were me, I would get every physical option I have vested in Marvel out of e-Pack and COMC. UD has always been shady.

quote:

Originally posted by mykdude:
At least now UD can't force dealers to take their Hockey junk if they want Marvel cases in their shop.

While True, Sci Fi Card's newsletter said this morning that Topps won't sell to them at all so they won't be able to carry Marvel products from Topps/Fantatics.

quote:

Originally posted by jcracch:
Links to the announcement

https://www.fanaticsinc.com/pr...r-wars-collaboration

This is super interesting, now the UD ePack announcement I saw makes sense.

Not a surprise as this was rumored for a long time.

I have no idea if this is a good thing . . . UD Doesn't do much at all with Disney cards so most likely a win there. Their Marvel sets are also very hit or miss for me. . .

Personally the biggest change ultimately is that these won't be available on ePack anymore, which means far fewer cards on COMC. Those are the 2 main sources I buy from anymore.

I hope they can create better designs for their autograph cards of celebrities. Move away from the stupid autograph subet names, and go to on card autographs. We'll see.

UD has produced a ton of celebrity Marvel autographs. . . I'm on the fence until something comes out from Topps/Fanatics that grabs me.

quote:

Originally posted by webjon:

quote:

Originally posted by mykdude:
At least now UD can't force dealers to take their Hockey junk if they want Marvel cases in their shop.

While True, Sci Fi Card's newsletter said this morning that Topps won't sell to them at all so they won't be able to carry Marvel products from Topps/Fantatics.

Not quite sure what that means. The few card shops I am familiar with usually get their product through a distributor. Is Topps not selling to them either?

quote:

Originally posted by mykdude:
Not quite sure what that means. The few card shops I am familiar with usually get their product through a distributor. Is Topps not selling to them either?

Over the past few years Topps has moved away from the wholesale model we all are familiar with.

They cut GTS out of all hobby product. GTS is the largest distributor in the country.
Southern Hobby has not had Topps products for most of this year, so I'm guessing they were cut off too.

Topps wants to sell direct to consumer and direct to hobby stores. Unfortunately, they have no interest in show dealers or web only dealers. Plus you would have to take all the sports to get the numbers you want on Star Wars and Marvel. No different than UD there.

Look at Star Wars in the last 2 years. That is the future of Marvel.

Ed

I guess it isn't a complete shock given that Fanatics has a full blown direct to consumer infrastructure. Not to mention Topps has been pushing certain products in that fashion for several years now.

I would assume dealer incentives are still in play, what about agreements from the manufacturer to not undercut the dealers? Or is that no longer a thing?

As a specialty shop its almost as if you would have to make deals with shops that primarily push sports to dump the extra junk you didn't want to buy in the first place.

As I am currently working for a small collectibles shop where cards are a small part of our product mix, Fanatics is a nightmare to deal with. They pretty much "own" the market right now with the companies they have purchased. If you though UD was bad wait until you see what Fanatics has up it's sleeve.