Information wanted on how to buy E Packs
i am interested in buying E Packs do I have to set up an account. What companies sell them. How do you get the cards sent to you. etc

Check out the Agent Carter thread in the News and Rumors section. We kind of went round and round about e-Packs and COMC because Agent Carter was an exclusive release. e-Packs themselves are only done by Upper Deck apparently and you have to sign up and buy through UD.

Thanks Raven seems to be a quiet involved system mite give them a miss seems like they are mostly for flippers

ePack is an Upper Deck platform, it only sells Upper Deck products.

The website is: https://www.upperdeckepack.com

You'll need an account to sign up, and you can get a free pack daily to try out the platform.

I agree, it is an involved system -- it allows you to open packs, trade cards and chat with other collectors.

There are a lot of collectors on ePack. In general I don't think there are a ton of flippers on ePack. The products are generally on sale for MSRP, so I'm not sure that's great for flippers. Also ePack products tend to be available after retail, so that again isn't great for flippers.

You can mail yourself cards directly through the ePack site (they call it transferring) or you can transfer the cards to COMC.

If you have any other questions feel free to post them.

Good luck!

Jon

I tried epack a while pack. I still go every day and open the free daily epack for the doctor strange set.
Overall, I an neutral to it.
Example- Pro I got a couple of cool Doctor Strange insert cards when I did open a few packs. Con, it cost 5.99 to mail 8 cards.
Pro-it is fun opening the daily "Free" pack which is 1 card and slowly making a doctor strange base set. Con- you cannot transfer base cards to physical cards so I have a digital copy of these cards but can not transfer "a real" copy like you can on the inserts.

Pro- the price on the packs are ok when they have a buy one get one sale or 50% off. Con when the packs are not on sale, I don't want to pay full price and only be able to get physical copies of the insert cards.

According to the new Dec/Jan 2019 issue UD has released a 2018 Predator set exclusive to e-Packs. Seems to have been drawn out at a couple of cards per week over 14 weeks starting in September.

So another Pro is that very limited cards are coming out on titles that are not deemed to be worthy of a general release, but may be well received by some collectors. Con - Unless your sitting on the e-Pack platform and are willing to play whatever games for whatever time is necessary to buy your cards, you aren't going to get them that way anyhow.

Another Con, which is kind of a big one to me, is that e-Pack buyers seem to be waiting on the release in 90 days or so, rather than buying cards in the traditional release. Doesn't that seem counter productive to selling out the boxes/cases in the traditional release, when there is one? Doesn't that sound like UD is competing against its own dealers/distributors? Kind of does.

After reading everything and the info from members and the Blowout forum the E Pack seems to be too complicated too many fish hooks i will still try the daily free card for a while but it seems that I cant get the base cards only the inserts so the base cards sit in the E Pack site also some of the packs are an very high price at $15 $22 for me a pack was going to go for the X Men but at $3 a card it is a no no so I dont think that they are for me is there a way that you can just give away your base cards

quote:

Originally posted by barobehere:
Con- you cannot transfer base cards to physical cards so I have a digital copy of these cards but can not transfer "a real" copy like you can on the inserts.

Generally you can combine multiple digital cards into a physical card that can be transferred. There are some exceptions, I know one of the Goodwin sets had free cards that were not able to be combined.

A lot of the trading happening on e-pack is people who are trading digital cards so they can be combined into physical cards and transferred out.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:
So another Pro is that very limited cards are coming out on titles that are not deemed to be worthy of a general release, but may be well received by some collectors. Con - Unless your sitting on the e-Pack platform and are willing to play whatever games for whatever time is necessary to buy your cards, you aren't going to get them that way anyhow.

I'm sure the Predator cards will be available on COMC and possibly eBay if you don't want to try to get them on ePack. The Predator sales format has been extremely problematic -- hopefully Upper Deck learns from that for future releases.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:
Another Con, which is kind of a big one to me, is that e-Pack buyers seem to be waiting on the release in 90 days or so, rather than buying cards in the traditional release. Doesn't that seem counter productive to selling out the boxes/cases in the traditional release, when there is one? Doesn't that sound like UD is competing against its own dealers/distributors? Kind of does.

I'd be curious to hear what dealers think of ePack and if they see it being competition to traditional releases.

Due to the delay in the ePack release and the price always being at MSRP and the changes to format I'm not sure it is a lot of competition to traditional dealer sales.

I also think that the dealer/distribution network for trading cards is extremely broken. I tried to buy Infinity War locally and couldn't. I suspect only a small percentage of the US population is within a 30 minute drive to a store that has a decent stock of entertainment cards.

quote:

Originally posted by piko:
After reading everything and the info from members and the Blowout forum the E Pack seems to be too complicated too many fish hooks i will still try the daily free card for a while but it seems that I cant get the base cards only the inserts so the base cards sit in the E Pack site also some of the packs are an very high price at $15 $22 for me a pack was going to go for the X Men but at $3 a card it is a no no so I dont think that they are for me is there a way that you can just give away your base cards

If a low price is your primary desire ePack isn't going to be the best option for most sets -- although their sales prices can be decent, and if a set increases in price on the secondary market the ePack price remains the same until sold out.

I don't think you can give away your base cards, but you can trade them away until you only have one card left.

Your location says New Zealand -- I'm not sure how much shipping from the US to your country costs, but one benefit to you could be that you can combine ePack and COMC purchases (and ePack trades) and ship them all to yourself in one shipment.

One other pro -- and this one is critical for me. . . I know exactly what cards are in the product when I buy it. No pre-ordering hoping that a mock up autograph actually makes it in the set.

quote:

Originally posted by webjon:

quote:

Originally posted by barobehere:
Con- you cannot transfer base cards to physical cards so I have a digital copy of these cards but can not transfer "a real" copy like you can on the inserts.

Generally you can combine multiple digital cards into a physical card that can be transferred. There are some exceptions, I know one of the Goodwin sets had free cards that were not able to be combined.

A lot of the trading happening on e-pack is people who are trading digital cards so they can be combined into physical cards and transferred out.

You are right. I looked into it. For the doctor Strange base it takes 20 digital copy of a card to make 1 card you can get shipped!

I enquired about E Packs as I thought that it would be a more interesting thing to branch out to I dont sell cards once I get a card it is a prisoner for life I will trade But i do not have the computer knowledge to be able to operate the system too much going on at once but as i say i will get the free cards for a while at present they are locked but I think that they have to be unlocked for offers or trading but I will cross that hurdle when it comes too much hassle for me i will stay with E Bay and change direction there thank you all for your help and info

quote:

Originally posted by barobehere:

quote:

Originally posted by webjon:

quote:

Originally posted by barobehere:
Con- you cannot transfer base cards to physical cards so I have a digital copy of these cards but can not transfer "a real" copy like you can on the inserts.

Generally you can combine multiple digital cards into a physical card that can be transferred. There are some exceptions, I know one of the Goodwin sets had free cards that were not able to be combined.

A lot of the trading happening on e-pack is people who are trading digital cards so they can be combined into physical cards and transferred out.

You are right. I looked into it. For the doctor Strange base it takes 20 digital copy of a card to make 1 card you can get shipped!

A couple of the sets are really high like that, I think Dinosaurs is also 20 digital to make a physical base.

I think I have quite a bit of digital Dr Strange base -- hit me up with a trade if you want -- same ID as on here. If you use a different ID message me to let me know it is you.

dose every one get the same daily free card EG Dr Strange if i get the free card and say it is base card #1 dose everyone that takes the Dr Strange card that day get the same #1 card

I am pretty sure the free daily packs are random.

Just had a small epiphany...

By mail, single card trades are pointless unless it's a high value card.

The nice thing about ePack is it takes no more effort or cost to trade 1 or 11 cards. I got a trade offer today and realized I'd never do that trade through the mail.

Best bet is to build up some trade bait when they have a pack sale. Not many trading for the daily free cards.

Ed

Ed-

Great point!

Postage rates really killed off trading commons for me. It got to the point that if I wasn't within 1 trade from completing a set I wouldn't bother trying to complete it.

The other thing about trading on ePack is that you don't need to worry about anything getting lost in the mail or unscrupulous traders. I've made really high end trades on ePack with total strangers that I never would have attempted through the mail.

Jon