UD e-Pack® store: A Marvel Sale is Live!

[finfangfan]

It’s funny how we are in last days of Marvel ePack sales and the thread dedicated to that has gone so far off track that no one is talking about the sales that are soon to expire for good. Granted I also have contributed to the drift. Also it seems like over at ePack not too many people are biting at the remaining products at current discount levels.

Do we get a 90% off?

[Jaysabz]

Originally Posted by finfangfan

It will be interesting to see if Gunn’s Superman takes off. DC really needs a hit to get back on track. Marvel has also had some troubles so it might just be the movie crowd now only supports a narrower group of properties. Deadpool obviously seems to be an outlier among the recent crop of super hero movies.

I could have done w/ a pause after Endgame.

But they just kept churning - a dozen Marvel shows and a dozen Marvel movies, none of which I've watched. I'm sure some were good, I just don't have the time to watch multiple Marvel shows, or the desire to see multiple superhero movies a year any longer, especially when they feature characters I don't really care about. I like the Avengers. I don't care about Falcon, Loki, (Moon Knight is cool), the Marvels (other than Captain Marvel) - Agatha, Eternals, Shang Chi, any of the Defenders (Daredevil is cool) - it's just too much.

Deadpool was great, but those movies are in their own category.

As far as Superhero projects moving forward:

Interesting mix of characters they announced for Avengers: Doomsday!

I am interested in "Lanterns" as I'm a huge Green Lantern fan and I like the castings so far, but I was reading that it's going to be a detective-like show?? Don't know what that means.

They're taking their sweet time with a follow up to The Batman. We're looking at 2027 now, and why they needed to show Keoghan's Joker annoys the hell out of me. Now they are pigeon holed to using him if they go down that road - with the deformed mouth....

And with Gunn's Superman, I don't know what to believe. Been reading that Gunn rarely if ever does re-shoots but had to do a bunch over the winter as audience scores were low for Superman.

For me, Man of Steel was awesome - how he was hiding away on crab boats and oil rigs - just everything they did with the character after the Man of Steel kinda sucked IMO.

[HiltonL]

IIRC, we've hashed and re-hashed the topic of 'why so many releases'. The IP owner charges some base, minimum amount to the card company that holds the license and the card companies appear to have no upper limit on what they can crank out, therefore it's no loss to them to crank out multiple sets per month

[glorbgorb]

Originally Posted by HiltonL

...and the card companies appear to have no upper limit on what they can crank out, therefore it's no loss to them to crank out multiple sets per month

I'd argue there are still a lot of production costs that go into all that. I wonder, even with the deep discounts, how much UD made from some of the lesser sets that hung around. Obviously we'll never get that answer, but I have always wanted to know what physical versus ePack nets them. They still (usually) make combinable-specific parallels for most things that ended up on ePack, but presumably it was all printed at the same time. Do they actually save on packaging for COMC? How much does all that save?

I dunno. It's a bit sad to me as someone who is probably not going to partake in DC on ePack but still has a lot of curiosity about "how it all works." I've mentioned several times in other threads that I have sketched out how an ePack competitor could be made at the database layer. I even have a Google Sheet that shows an easy way to maintain and keep track of packs and hits. It's not hard. Of course I don't have the agreement with the companies or warehouse space, either!

[HiltonL]

Originally Posted by glorbgorb

...I have always wanted to know what physical versus ePack nets them. They still (usually) make combinable-specific parallels for most things that ended up on ePack, but presumably it was all printed at the same time. Do they actually save on packaging for COMC? How much does all that save?

Overhead is significant. I wonder if anybody in our little forum can chime in with an example of what it costs to print say an art book versus the cost to the end consumer. My hunch is (based on watching a bunch of Food Network shows) 25% or less of the budget goes into the actual production of the product, the rest is overhead+profit

Then breaking down the physical vs epack, there is probably 10-20% savings of production cost for having minimal bulk packaging versus all of the packing out of cards into packs/boxes/cases. Again, just my swag.

[Scrub]

It is all about the digital base. If it is 10:1 digital to physical, then they don't have to print 90% of the base that an entirely physical release would. 90% savings on millions of base that most people don't care about is huge, plus packaging, distribution, etc. UD just ships everything to COMC and then it is their problem. UD just collects revenue from the epack site (and seemingly does not re-invest a dime in the platform, as we are all aware!).

[glorbgorb]

I don't think it is quite that straightforward. They do have physical base for hobby/retail SKUs. So it sort of comes down to whatever the breakdown is for physical versus ePack. Even then I don't think a pack of physical usually matches up card-for-card with ePack, right, so the actual numbers would still be wonky. (Edit: I mean a physical pack may have 6 cards, ePack may have 4 or 5.)

For simplicity, let's say 50% goes to distributors, 50% goes to ePack.

All that means is that 50% of the base cards do not need to be produced. Granted, that's still a big number.

The ePack platform adds just a tad more complexity:
-any combined cards (typically 10 and 100 base) are 100% ePack
-any achievements are 100% ePack
-some sets have parallels that are 100% ePack (Fleer Ultra Wolverine Green, for example, right? I think?)

Of the three items above, only the combined cards applies to the sets that have digital base (granted, the majority of sets).

[finfangfan]

I honestly think if UD would start ePack from scratch today they would just make products like the Agent Carter hit packs and in the Marvel Premier format. There is soooooo much inefficiency in the model they chose. If you surveyed ePack users what the most annoying thing was about ePack I would guess 2/3rds would say the boatload of unwanted base trades you get vs trades for cards that are actually on your wishlist. It’s only going to get worse now that Marvel left and people move offsite.

[Xazark]

A UD rep once commented here that they still do all of the packaging and printing etc.. for the cards that go to epack - I didn't believe them then and dont believe them now but thats what they said.

[YayNJ]

Originally Posted by finfangfan

I honestly think if UD would start ePack from scratch today they would just make products like the Agent Carter hit packs and in the Marvel Premier format. There is soooooo much inefficiency in the model they chose. If you surveyed ePack users what the most annoying thing was about ePack I would guess 2/3rds would say the boatload of unwanted base trades you get vs trades for cards that are actually on your wishlist. It’s only going to get worse now that Marvel left and people move offsite.

I've been on ePack for years, but only really started using it properly recently, and in that time I've had a surprising number of people wanting to trade for base cards

I guess everyone wants their glossy golds etc etc (and as many as they can stockpile)

[Xazark]

Originally Posted by YayNJ

I've been on ePack for years, but only really started using it properly recently, and in that time I've had a surprising number of people wanting to trade for base cards

I guess everyone wants their glossy golds etc etc (and as many as they can stockpile)

people definitely want to combine cards up, its often to complete achievements or just to get physical cards, but the sheer number of these unwanted parallels available means they are $0.02 on comc and when looking through someones collection its hard to see the hits amongst the sea of base trash. For example, I have 21,000+ cards on epack of which 13,000+ are digital only and im sure multiple thousand more are low end worthless, so to find the ~2,000 (guess) cards that are of any interest means you need to sift through 10 cards to see 1.

There are a heap of site improvements they could make to improve this experience, but as mentioned above it doesn't appear they reinvest much money into site improvements.

[YayNJ]

Originally Posted by Xazark

people definitely want to combine cards up, its often to complete achievements or just to get physical cards, but the sheer number of these unwanted parallels available means they are $0.02 on comc and when looking through someones collection its hard to see the hits amongst the sea of base trash. For example, I have 21,000+ cards on epack of which 13,000+ are digital only and im sure multiple thousand more are low end worthless, so to find the ~2,000 (guess) cards that are of any interest means you need to sift through 10 cards to see 1.

There are a heap of site improvements they could make to improve this experience, but as mentioned above it doesn't appear they reinvest much money into site improvements.

It's not always about the sale value though. I'm currently under the weather and have a few days off and it's a fun way to pass the time everything I've combined I'll just share between my two kids who are both starting to get into Marvel/DC

[finfangfan]

I think one easy improvement UD could make is to let you set filters to autoamtically block 100% of trades that don’t include an item in your wishlist. It would also be nice if they gave you the option to toggle on/off the ability for users not on your friend list to send you a direct message. Most of the drama is from the dregs sending messages and trades that don’t include cards you are actually on the website looking for.

[mjohnatgt]

Originally Posted by Xazark

I have 21,000+ cards on epack of which 13,000+ are digital only and im sure multiple thousand more are low end worthless, so to find the ~2,000 (guess) cards that are of any interest means you need to sift through 10 cards to see 1.

Really easy to filter a port on ePack for "physical" cards and go from there.

[mjohnatgt]

Originally Posted by finfangfan

I think one easy improvement UD could make is to let you set filters to autoamtically block 100% of trades that don’t include an item in your wishlist.

How would that work if you're a sketch collector? Every new set you'd need to add every sketch artist to your wish list? That seems awful.

[finfangfan]

Originally Posted by mjohnatgt

How would that work if you're a sketch collector? Every new set you'd need to add every sketch artist to your wish list? That seems awful.

If you’re a sketch collector just don’t set the filter. I’m not saying the filter would be forced for everyone. If you don’t set a filter the website would act exactly as it does for you now which I agree with you… SEEMS AWFUL!

[DynaEtch]

Originally Posted by HiltonL

Point is that of course when we talk about "the hockey license" or "the Marvel license" or "the Star Wars license" here, we're talking about the company that holds the main trading card license for that IP, notwithstanding all of the one-off or even minor use of such IP
Rittenhouse held the "main trading card license notwithstanding any existing use by UD for the pre-existing Marvel Masterpieces trademark or consumer packaged goods manufacturers printing one-off uses" doesn't roll off the tongue, does it?

I do think there was more UD was doing beyond MM during the Rittenhouse era, including 3 series of Beginnings, Marvel Retro, Premier, and I believe Marvel Now was like 2013ish. So whether you want to call that minor…idk, but it was several sets.

Originally Posted by finfangfan

Total side note to this topic and thread….but just wanted to say how friggin awesome is this- a company releasing their annual report in the form of a comic. Leave it to Marvel!

[Xazark]

Originally Posted by mjohnatgt

Really easy to filter a port on ePack for "physical" cards and go from there.

Yea I do that, I also filter by other means and keep my wishlist updated so its easier for me to look at other collections - doesn't change the fact that I have thousands of cards that are just clogging up space - I suppose its the same when opening physical cases, you end up with a lot of useless paper, but at least I can put them in a box that I rarely ever look at and they dont clutter my main collection.

[Xazark]

Another note - I have actually noticed there are several people that seem to have multiple accounts to manage this type of thing, i.e. only have sketches or high end cards, if marvel was sticking around on epack, I might consider setting it up a bit better like this but dont think I am going to be buying much DC stuff

[YayNJ]

Originally Posted by Xazark

doesn't change the fact that I have thousands of cards that are just clogging up space

I'll take 'em

[PurplesaurusRex]

It's really annoying when someone sends you like 20 Beginnings base for a handful of Fleer Ultra base. C'mon now. At least do something of similar value like Flair base.

[Jaysabz]

ePack is a VERY smart model.

Dangerous for dopamine hunter, but very smart.

If you buy into breaks, even the breakers are on a schedule and most shut down for a few hours a night. But not ePack. Dopamine for sale 24/7, 365 from the comfort of your computer.

I've heard tell that certain breakers have "whales" that'd spend hundreds of thousands of dollars with them each year. I suspect it's not hard to do, especially in PYT formats - for products like N.T., Immaculate and Flawless.

I wonder how much cash an Upper Deck ePack "Whale" drops in a year. Do you think it could be a case where the Top 1% of buyers purchase like 50% of a product run?? Food for thought...

[finfangfan]

I think the most famous ePack whale was the FUXM guy. He came in a bit late to the set (on ePack at least) but probably bought out half of the print run.

[Chrominator]

[Chrominator]

Last night, hit this from a 2-packer:


Lilith Fleer Ultra Midnight Sons Medallions Ruby Red, M-24 - #/50



And this morning I pulled this fantastic Aaron Roberts sketch:


Aaron Roberts Marvel Allegiance: Avengers vs. X-Men Sketch Cards, SKT - "Ant-Man"