One More Pack

www.upperdeckepack.com
I’m sure you’ve read posts about this service before, but here is my take.  It’s a relatively new service (Since January) from Upper Deck that allows users to digitally build sets, combine cards, trade with other users, and even have them shipped in physical form.  It has some great features and some pretty big pitfalls.  To simplify e-Packs, you can buy (you are given 3 free base cards per day) packs, boxes, and cases and open them digitally.  Each card is scanned so you can see front and back of the card and all the cards are the same as the real cardboard you can buy in your local store. Here are a few examples of the cards I own.

UD Game Jersey, GJ-SR

4 THINGS TO LOVE
1.) Instant access from any device with an internet connection. This lets you access your cards, purchase cards, trade cards, and combine cards from anywhere.
2.) Trading with 100’s of people from around the world makes it easy to find trading partners and make trades.  It’s also rather simple to offer, counter, and accept trades once you get used to it.
3.) While you can’t get the base cards sent to you, just about any other digital card can be sent to you in the physical form.  It can also be transferred to your COMC.com account.
4.) Combining base cards to create a foil card!  You can collect 10 of one player and combine them to get a foil version that then can be sent in a physical form.  This is by far my favorite aspect of the E-Packs.  I wish I could trade my 23 of the same base cards from 1989 Pro Set for a couple of better cards!

Silver Foil Board 21 (Brian Gionta)

There are also two digital only sets that can combine for a short printed card.

Instant Impressions (25 cards combined to get Jack Eichel)

Code to Greatness (25 cards combined to get Connor McDavid)

3 THINGS TO HATE
1.) One of my main complaints is the ease at which you can purchase.  If you connect a credit card to your account you are two clicks away from purchasing cards and opening packs.  You can see where someone with a slightly addictive personality could spend some crazy cash on digital trading cars.
2.) As with any of online trading forums you have some people trying to take advantage of others.   Some of the users have hundreds of thousands of cards.  I’m not sure if they are spending thousands of dollars or cheating the system, but I often get trade offers that make no sense at all.  My CTG cards for two base cards is not an acceptable offer.  I’d love to see a card count of number of cards that exists in the whole system.  It would allow for an easy comparison and less sketchy trades.
3.) I’m not sure how this will hold up over time.  You can’t exactly keep you collection in a shoe box.  Will some new technology come along in the 5 years that makes this obsolete?  Remember etopps?

Overall I think the pros outweigh the cons and I’m going to optimistically keep my eye on it.  Hopefully Upper Deck will continue to grow the positives and remove the negatives.  I’m currently working on a complete foil set (10 copies of every base card, 5 copies of every young game) If you are looking to increase your trading partners or just make a new friend to chat cards and sports with, you can find me on the Upper Deck E-Pack site at the username GimmeSomeJimmy.

Let me know what you think while I go open one more pack.