Every card company has tried various gimmicks to try and separate collectors from their money. Whether it is on-demand cards like Topps and Panini have produced or art cards like this year’s Topps Project 2020. Upper Deck’s gimmick is e-Pack, an experience aimed at collectors that chase hits and toss the base cards aside. I hadn’t done much with them since their launch except claim a few free packs of the day which are pretty useless. That all changed when I came across a Mickey Mouse set that apparently had been released through e-Pack only. There were some fun inserts and the cards looked cool, so I purchased a box and clicked them open.
Clicking open a box of digital cards just isn’t the same as ripping open the packs of a physical box of cards. Now, these aren’t digital cards like Topps Bunt, but you can only be shipped cards that Upper Deck considers “hits.” Luckily, since the base cards in this set are serial numbered, you can get everything that comes out of this box. If you want the physical versions of your cards, you can have them shipped for a fairly expensive fee or you can have them transferred to Check Out My Cards and added to your inventory there.
It wasn’t long after opening my box that I found out one of the best aspects of e-Pack for collectors. You can get anything except for the rarest hits for next to nothing. I was able to complete the Mickey Mouse base set, even the highest tier cards numbered to 299, and pick up a handful of cool inserts for less than the cost of a second box. That’s a good final result for me and if the pandemic ever ends, I’ll be able to get all of these cards shipped from Check Out My Cards (without having to wait 3 months).
My next experience with e-Pack wasn’t too long after this. For some reason, I passed up on Upper Deck’s Clerks release when it first came out. It probably had something to do with the close to $100 price per box, but I was riding high on selling all of my basketball cards whose prices had skyrocketed during the pandemic and decided to try a box. The boxes are actually tough to track down these days, so I decided to give e-Pack a try. I figured that I could buy a set of the base cards online. but those turned out to be scarce as well.
I did alright with one of the two autographs in my box. I don’t think that Jeff Anderson does a lot of comic book conventions, so it was cool to get his autograph. I pulled a printing plate as well. Unfortunately, my base cards are forever lost to me, but I played the e-Pack game again and headed on over to Check Out My Cards. I grabbed all of the insert cards and a ton of the autographs for less than what a second box would have cost. It’s kind of insane how much e-Pack devalues the majority of the cards from the set. You can get inserts for thirty-seven cents and autographs for two bucks, but base cards are rare.
So, my take away from this is that I will most likely stick to just browsing Check Out My Cards for any set that’s been released through e-Pack to pick up lots of cheap cards. I still like to put together base sets and don’t open a box just to see what hits I’ve gotten (of course I do want good hits, but I also want a base set). It’s a good alternative to Upper Deck’s insanely priced Marvel releases. If you don’t mind collecting the e-Pack versions of the cards, you can grab a set fairly cheaply.
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