Hockey ePack Lunch Break

[Lazlow]

Work's pretty dead today, so I got too tempted on my lunch break.

Might keep this as a rolling thread for ePack breaks.

Today
3 packs of 2022-23 UD Extended Series
2 packs of 2021-22 O-Pee-Chee Platinum

 

[Lazlow]

lol got lazy, done few more since

 

[Lazlow]

23-24 Series is up, had a dip on 3 packs

 

[ozsportscardcollector]

That's excellent hitting 2 YG's with just 3 packs. Edvinsson's a decent pull.

This is the only flagship product that e-pack has priced correctly. All the other stuff can be had at hobby shops for 50% less. I busted about 10 loose packs of 2022-23 S2 at $5.5USD per pack and got 2 YG's that both sell on comc for less than $1 and the inserts go for a few cents. Pretty much turned $55 into $3. If they don't start heavily discounting those products they will sit on there for the next 10 years.

I still have 700 physical cards sitting on epack from the last 4 years but at $0.25 cents postage per card, I'm not in a hurry to bring them home. They aren't valuable cards, just lots of stuff for my sets.

I'll definitely have a crack on e-pack when S2 comes out. It will be cheaper at release than hobby shops. I suspect they will sell it at $160-180USD which is a lot better than $300USD and the $400AUD Cherry has at presell. Anyone paying $400 for a box of UD hockey has too much money, lol.

I suspect it will sell out on epack within 24 hours at those prices. There's guys on there who break ten cases at a time!

 

[Lazlow]

I'm still trying to figure an economically comfortable lane to engage with this hobby, it can't be like before that's for sure!

And while I still wrestle with the whole paying for a partially digital product, when I look at all the boxes I've still yet to sort from a decade ago, then I question where the value really lies. If I'm going to put to together a base set, I'll probably pick one product from the line up to order over. Used to be OPC Platinum, but I hear the UD have been messing that one up too.

I've just ticked over 100 physical cards on ePack, although not all Hockey (and some of it was from when the platform first launched) and I haven't really engaged with the trading side of it yet, but I can definitely see the upside of cutting out international postage rates.

 

[ozsportscardcollector]

As for the postage costs perhaps you misunderstood me. If you are only after the hits in a box then it's cheaper to buy a box on there and just ship the individual cards out rather than buy the whole box from Blow Out, SCC or MIraj and pay $60USD shipping for a few boxes. But for me it sucks that I have to pay $0.25 cents shipping for a $0.02 card. That makes set building fairly expensive.

If you buy directly from comc the shipping is built into the seller's price but when you take cards off e-pack comc does the postage for them and you get charged $0.25 per card which is expensive imo. I have to pay $50USD postage just to get $10 worth of inserts back home. There's no way around it as far as I can see. Set collecting hockey is expensive when you live in Australia.

The trading side of e-pack is great, however. There is no way I could trade to make up my sets over here. In that regard e-pack is very handy. Initially I had an issue with not getting the base cards as they are digital but they don't have a lot of value even a 200 card base set like UD hockey. Those might go for $5 and you'd have to just give them to your LCS and get $5 in trade value. Or just give them away. I doubt anyone will pay $15 shipping for a $5 item - just guessing on the costs.

What I do like about the digital cards is that you can amalgamate them and make a physical Silver foil or Speckled Rainbow foil parallel card. I would never do it with Young Guns cards but I like doing it with base cards. 100 digital base cards makes 1 physical speckled Rainbow foil card which imo looks great. I'm currently trying to speckle all Elias Pettersson UD hockey base cards.

Overall I love e-pack but it's super addictive and other than the most recent release it's way too expensive. Very easy to just open packs 24/7. Fanatics would be crazy not to have a similar thing to e-pack.

 

[ozsportscardcollector]

23-24 Series is up, had a dip on 3 packs

I forgot that 23-24 had a different format with the bigger packs.

 

[Lazlow]

A little 3 pack night cap of 23-24 S1

McDavid Star Zone giving me nice 90's vibes.

 

[Lazlow]

Had 4 trade requests for the Edvinsson YG:

• for an Akita Hirose YG
• second one I forget their initial offer by I swapped it out for a Hoglander YG Canvas They declined
• third offer was a bundle that included my Kyrou Lunchbox Legends and Lorentz base for their Hughes Allure Rainbow Red-Orange, Podz Skybox Metal rookie, and Hoglander debut dates. Never got the notification though and it expired.
• fourth guy left the offer blank but he had very little to trade and nothing that took my interest