was wondering about peoples thought on epack cards

[icefields]

not overly familiar with the epack products so i was wondering

are the young guns (speckled rainbow or gold rainbow)
are they desirable or just an oddity that a specific player collector would cherish.

are they equal to or greater/lesser "value" than the base young guns
and (i dont think) are they considered rookie cards? or just similar to the exclusives/clear cuts etc

thanx guys and gals

[sparty07]

I like the concept of e-pack, but the shipping rates can get ridiculous as they don't do any bulk discounts (actually had a brief chat with @UpperDeckassist about this today after I saw a guy being charged over $135US to send his cards home to Canada, with an expected delivery date of 2/15. Yes this was for a bunch of cards, but that still seems a bit excessive to gather and ship the cards). Also, it seems like their pack prices are higher than my LCS, so I usually only buy during a sale.

With regards to the speckled, I have a couple foiled, gold, speckled, etc base cards which are fun inserts into my PC. I have not yet spent the time trying to trade for enough Hirose YG to foil/speckle them, but I would like to get them as a goal to have as many of his cards as I can. I would consider them rookie cards, but looking through the other thread (https://www.sportscardforum.com/thre...-a-rookie-card) I am in the minority. In terms of value, I have seen people who create them ask for X plus a premium with X being the number of YG required times the rough value, and others actually value them for less than X because it's not a rookie card. As with anything, the more rare it is, the more valuable, which makes for a nice inverse as more people build the foil/speckle they risk decreasing the value

[pwskelly]

My experience on ePack .... never, ever foil any YG you want to trade or sell. It's not worth it. Most foil YGs sell for far less than the 5 individual YGs required to foil. You will never get the full value. If it is for PC, then yeah, it is a cool concept.

[Taxi]

I would only ever foil lower end YGs that can't be moved on their own. Like PWSKELLY said, the value of foils is almost always lower than the collected value of the individual cards.

[RGM81]

I like the Foil/Speckled cards myself. I usually put together the Habs team set each year minus the higher-priced YG's (if any). Something fun for the collection without breaking the bank. In pre-COVID times, once they start hitting COMC you can usually round up the base cards for under a buck a pop, with maybe $2-$3 for the speckled foil versions.

For the YG's, they're parallels. And they look pretty sharp:



I think all told I paid maybe $20 worth to get it. You look on COMC now and the lowest price is $16.61 for a Foil whereas a true RC YG is $4.50...and you won't even see the cards until 2021 unless you pay through the nose. The key for determining their impact/collectibility really comes down to how many are in the ePack environment. For Poehling here, there's only 11 Foil plus another 5 Foil on COMC. That figure of course doesn't include how many have already been redeemed and cashed out, but I feel like that's a lower number compared to other Habs rookies from past years.

[30ranfordfan]

I like ePack well enough, though the prices are not great (like was already mentioned) unless you catch something on sale.

The Foils, they're like any parallel. I don't think many consider them to be an actual Rookie Card, they're a parallel of a Rookie Card.

Like virtually all parallels, they're also tougher to get than the base, and as such they're worth more. Personally, I think they're undervalued - but that tells you how desirable they are.

I think part of the issues with them, is there's still a lot of "old school" collectors, that ignore anything that was only available via a website.

It take 5 YGs to get a Foil, and I'm guessing the Foil would be worth about 3x as much as the base YG. The only person whose going to do that (make the foil) is someone who wants the cards for themselves.