News about 2023-24 UD Series 1!

[katoy2j]

Pretty hard to compare Upper Deck to Apple, a global multi-billion dollar company that manufactures one of the most important devices in every single person's life right now...

I would say it's a very fair comparison. Upper Deck has a monopoly over the production of the hockey card market so they have control. There is no competition. Apple at least has competition in the space which Upper Deck does not but in the North American market is the dominant player.

It would be very easy for Upper Deck to prevent distributors from putting the screws to hobby shops. There are only a handful of distributors to monitor. In fact it makes sense to because it damages their brand. They don't make any extra money when the distributor raises the prices so putting a maximum profit such as they can charge up to 15% above cost on preorders and 30% above cost on after pre order purchases to hobby shops solves the issue very easily. Why don't they do it? Because they don't care about the shops or the collectors. If the price goes up to insane amounts then it just drives more sales to e-pack.

They allow distributors to do what they do. They have the control to stop it. The fact that they don't makes them just as responsible, if not more.

 

[frankiefives]

I would say it's a very fair comparison. Upper Deck has a monopoly over the production of the hockey card market so they have control. There is no competition. Apple at least has competition in the space which Upper Deck does not but in the North American market is the dominant player.

It would be very easy for Upper Deck to prevent distributors from putting the screws to hobby shops. There are only a handful of distributors to monitor. In fact it makes sense to because it damages their brand. They don't make any extra money when the distributor raises the prices so putting a maximum profit such as they can charge up to 15% above cost on preorders and 30% above cost on after pre order purchases to hobby shops solves the issue very easily. Why don't they do it? Because they don't care about the shops or the collectors. If the price goes up to insane amounts then it just drives more sales to e-pack.

They allow distributors to do what they do. They have the control to stop it. The fact that they don't makes them just as responsible, if not more.

While I agree that Upper Deck has the power to do more (and should do more), the main culprits remain the distributors. They are like a racket. They basically extort hobby shops. I've simply stopped breaking most of the products other than the staple brands. It has saved me money so I guess I should thank them lol

 

[katoy2j]

We can agree to disagree. Upper Deck went out of their way to make sure that only actual stores could purchase hobby products. This required vetting thousands of stores. To oversee less than a dozen distributors is nothing from a scope perspective to ensure they don't damage their brand.

 

[junyab]

The shops are just as guilty as the distributors. When 2 shops in my city, using the same distributor, have boxes priced $30 apart on release day you know it's not just the distributors.

I've almost completely stopped buying boxes from LCS, and breaks too. E-Pack is getting 90% of my card budget, and 10% is buying singles from ebay.

I loved this idea by UD. Increasing the number of YG parallels is something I've been saying for years so I'm beyond excited about this. Adding more numbered insert parallels is hopefully on the horizon as well. But until then, at least epack has achievements for inserts..