Upper Deck ePacks

[frankiefives]

You guys are saying the price for S&H is high I have 20 E topps cards I will never get as the price to ship them is unreal the price for these are find I got a Connor McDavid YG I hope
being mail it better be in a toploader I let you know when I get it

Did you pay the extra 20 cents for the toploader? That's a requirement with COMC if you want one

[maple19]

I not a comc member I just did it through ud a day later I found it out that it was coming from COMC BC Canada

[CHERRYPICKER]

quote" Upper Deck Series One Hockey cards are now available at hobby shops across North America. Retail packs, boxes and collectible tins will be on retailer shelves starting November 18th, and are currently available on UpperDeckStore.com. In addition, Upper Deck will be offering a digital version of the product later this year." end quote

The more i read about ecards, and information pertaining to it, the more i scratch my head.

Lets take the first sectence : Retail packs/boxs/tins will be on retailers shelves starting Nov 18, and are currently available on UD.com.... does this mean that UD was selling Retail from their website before the LCS's got it for sale???

Second part: UD will be offering a DIGITAL VERSION later this year..... Digital means " available in electronic form; readable and manipulable by computer " and Version means " a particular form or variant of something " ecards are not that, they are real, actual cards..

did i miss something???

[maple19]

any company that sends a $200 card not in a toploader is not much of a company never knew COMC was in Canada and did not know they were sending I thought UD was sending it from the states

[frankiefives]

This is just one of the reasons why an Exclusive sucks

[ahmon]

I'm a newbie but I think its a game changer.

Also with more cards digitally stored, wouldn't it make cards experience less wear/tear?

50 years from now cards of today would still be in very good shape?

[hockeynick1721]

Richard: Definitely a well-written article. I read it twice. However, at the risk of appearing obtuse, I must question this passage:

Those collectors who felt “cheated” that there are only 7-9 High Gloss cards available from the physical release instead of the full ten may not have had that indignation had they been made aware of the program and its structure when Series 1 was released in November. While some understand that proportionally all the hit ratios and likelihood of hitting any individual SSP card remained unaffected by the reduced allocation, others simply view not having all cards in the physical product as problematic.

a) Certainly the feeling of being "cheated" would have been lessened or entirely negated had the program been thoroughly explained in November.
b) The problem with the second sentence is that we cannot know that proportionality has been maintained unless we get confirmation from Upper Deck that this is so. Specifically, let's say 20 Exclusives and 2 HG of each Young Gun were withheld from the Hobby distribution to supply the ePacks - 20 percent of the run. Proportionality is therefore maintained ONLY if the ePacks produced equal 20 percent of the total print run. If not, then those cards are either more concentrated (if ePacks are less than 20 percent of the total print run) or less concentrated (if ePacks are more than 20 percent of the total print run). Does that make sense? While UD says the ePacks will eventually sell out, we have NO information on how many are or will be produced. Even if there is an initial "production" run for ePacks (production used loosely for this mostly-virtual product), UD has a strong financial incentive to extend the supply of ePacks should the program prove to be a hit. Sure, they would run out of supply for the SP and SSP numbered cards, but who outside the company would know this? One would have to buy multiple cases late in the supply cycle to even suspect the supply of SP and SSP cards had been exhausted. We cannot trust UD to do the right thing, given their less than stellar record of transparency.

This problem is still only ancillary to the absolute fact that people who thought they were chasing any one of 100 Exclusive and 10 High Gloss McLarkinDomi cards were, in fact, only chasing 80 and 8 (or whatever the actual number is) and must now allocate additional funds to ePacks if they want a shot at those cards that were withheld from Hobby distribution - funds that were already allocated to previous purchases. In other words, if I felt comfortable entering a group break on a case of UD1 and paying $300 for Edmonton, a certain portion of that amount is to cover the possibility that I am going to hit one of the 100 Exclusive or 10 High Gloss McDavids (as I did back in 13/14 with MacKinnon). However, if I had known that I was only chasing one of 80 or 8 of those cards, I might have only paid $270 for that group break spot - and so on down the line for various amounts for various RC on various teams. Therefore, individually and in the aggregate, the REAL EXPECTED VALUE of any one group, case or box break - and therefore the expected value of the Hobby release as a whole - has been decreased by whatever percentage was withheld for ePacks, but the PERCEIVED EXPECTED VALUE was not accordingly adjusted simply because UD did not notify collectors in advance with any sort of actionable information.

This is certainly a breach of trust by UD and could be considered a fraudulent action if intent could be proven. I think they just didn't think about the ramifications of their actions. Did this aspect of it come up at all in your conversation with Chris Carlin?

Note I don't really have a dog in this fight, as I've only spent about $200 on UD1 this year and $28 on ePacks. I just think this is such an obvious case of improper action on UD's part that they shouldn't get a free pass on it.

This is well written and right on point. The people who think their odds of pulling a true limited card (i.e. Serial numbered /100 or less) were not diminished by upper deck holding back product is mind boggling. This all steams from upper deck not being transparent in their intents up front with their consumers.

[Gallinator]

Bottom line in all this? Don't be too flustered that one or two copies of a supremely short-printed card you probably weren't going to pull anyways was never in the physical release.

I guess I take umbrage at this point, then. To say that stripping away a certain percentage of the Hobby print run SP and SSP cards is, in effect, inconsequential and/or insignificant, is to ignore the decision-making process that underlies the purchase of Hobby product. You are effectively saying that there SHOULD NOT BE any price sensitivity on the part of the buyer when faced with a lesser supply of a certain good in a certain channel. This flies in the face of basic economic principles. When a bundle of goods sees a decrease in quantity of its valuable components, all other things held equal, its inherent value to a potential buyer ALWAYS decreases. The buyer can only introduce this into his buying decision, however, if that information is available prior to the decision being made. The blurb about a digital version being available later in the year provides no pertinent information.

The damage here is mainly in the aggregate. It's not about getting excited over one or two cards - although my point still applies even to tiny amounts - it's about getting excited over somewhere around 1100 cards over the entire Hobby run. If I were one of the people who dropped thousands of dollars on S1 Hobby, I would in fact be excited to the point of apoplexy!

[nyr4life]

My thoughts:

[mortuus]

whats the prices to ship like 1-5 cards?