Economics of ePack and COMC

For anyone who is into non-sports, particularly Upper Deck products, they know about UD's ePack platform. For anyone into non-sports OR sports cards, they know about COMC. They are tied together at the hip, as COMC does the fulfillment for ePack. That means that when you open any physical product for ePack, those cards are actually at a COMC facility. This also means when you transfer from ePack to COMC, really all they are doing is taking it from your ePack account and switching it over--it's ostensibly a database update with no need for physical shipping or anything like that.

Unfortunately that is a one-way street. You can transfer from ePack to COMC, but you can't go the other way. I'm not exactly sure why, as it would be just another database update (there is more behind the scenes, probably, so I am oversimplifying things). A big part of ePack is the achievements, and once you redeem a card for an achievement, you can't redeem it again. The ePack platform flags it as redeemed, though it is still a perfectly viable physical card. Once you transfer that same redeemed card to COMC, it doesn't matter. There is no flag there to say if a card was redeemed or not, because it doesn't matter.

This prevents you from buying cards cheaply on COMC, transferring them back "upstream" to ePack, and doing achievements. This also puts a divide in the different markets.

Another feature of the ePack platform is combining base cards. Right now there is an X-Men Metal set live on ePack. It has a low and a high series. The low series is not a physical card, meaning you cannot transfer a low series card to COMC. You can, however, combine 10 base cards to get an ePack-exclusive Blue parallel which is physical. If you are industrious enough with pack breaks or trading, you can do this multiple times and get 10 Blue parallels, then combine those for a Black parallel. So in essence, 100 base for one Black. Let me rephrase that: 100 non-physical, relatively worthless, low-series base for a physical Black ePack exclusive parallel.

You can do the same with high series as well, but those are already physical cards (meaning you can transfer to COMC if desired). Some people are offering $1.50 for a high-series. So that means if they are going for the Black parallel, that's roughly $150 in perceived value for that collector for the Black version of the high series card. That's more than many of the Red PMGs are that are /100, and more than the Pinks which are /75. That's strange to me.

Getting 100 of any card is a challenge because ePack trading can be... difficult. There is a chat feature on the site, and you may get some trades for exactly what you are looking for. Most times, it is lopsided. Few people seem to be ok with base-for-base trades.

With Metal, for example, I am collecting the Firestar cards. She has a low series and a high series base (along with some others, but we'll focus on the base). Same as above, I can collect 10 of each to get the Blue parallel, then 10 Blues to get the Black. Since I am a completionist, technically I need 110 of each, since I gotta keep a Blue one, too.

This is where that one-way street breaks down.

If I could buy 10 of the Blues on COMC, it would cost me roughly $6.50 (they're not all $.65, but you get the idea). I could then transfer them BACK to ePack, combine them, and be done. That is much cheaper than the $27, which is currently the cheapest Black version.

I've read some collectors say they keep things on ePack because they are worth more there. I can see some arguments for that.

The other odd part of ePack and COMC is this. We know they don't produce the base low series, again, using X-Men Metal as an example. This is also true for most of the non-premium sets. But that means that UD created the Blue and Black parallels specifically for combining base on ePack. OK, fine. But let's say that no one wants a Black parallel. People want Blues and that's it. That means that UD has to account for that (admittedly far-fetched) idea and print the maximum number of Blues that could possibly be made from however many low series cards are distributed via ePack pack, boxes, and cases.

In this example, what happens with all those Black parallels that were made and are sitting in COMC warehouses somewhere? Do they purge those at some point? Is there an expiration for ePack exclusive parallels, or will they sit there for an eternity? Maybe three-years from now someone on ePack decides they want to combine 10 of those Blues for a Black. So they have to keep them all, right?

Then think about what happens for the combined cards. You can combine 10 Blues for one Black. You no longer have those Blues in your account, but they are physical, so they are... somewhere. Do they physically destroy Blues when combined into a Black?

Just some of the weird things I think about.