What is a digital card pack?

The short answer

Every digital pack has the same basic shape. You pick a pack, open it on a screen, and a card is revealed. The difference is what that card is:

• Digital-only cards live inside one game or app. You can collect them, play with them, and sometimes trade them inside that app, but there is no physical card behind them.
• Packs backed by physical cards reveal a real card that exists in the world. The app keeps a record that the card is yours, and you can usually ask for the physical card to be mailed to you.

WaxRoom is the second kind. Every WaxRoom pack holds one real trading card that has already been graded by a professional grading company and sealed in a protective plastic case, called a slab.

Why open a pack on a phone at all?

Opening packs is one of the best parts of collecting. Digital packs keep that moment and remove some of the hassle around it:

• No raw-card guesswork. A card from a retail pack is ungraded, and its condition is unknown until someone grades it. A pack backed by graded cards tells you the card's grade the moment it is revealed.
• No storage or shipping until you want it. The card can stay in the app while you decide what to do with it.
• A clear list of what can be inside. A well-run pack lists the cards it can hold before you open it.

How a pack backed by real cards works

1. The pack has a checklist. Each pack is built from a set list of real graded cards, often around a theme such as one Pokémon, one sport, or one era.
2. The card is decided when you open it. When you open the pack, the service draws one card from that list and assigns it to your account. In WaxRoom, the draw happens on WaxRoom's servers before the opening animation starts, so the animation is only a presentation of a result that is already fixed.
3. You decide what happens next. The card is saved to your collection in the app. From there you can usually keep it, have it shipped, or trade it back to the service for credit.

What to check before you open any digital pack

Not every service works the same way. These questions are worth asking about any of them, including WaxRoom:

• Is the card real, and who graded it? Look for cards graded by a known company such as PSA, with a certification number you can look up on the grader's own website. Our guide to PSA graded Pokémon cards explains how.
• Can you see what is in the pack? A good pack publishes its full list of possible cards and how likely each kind of card is, before you open it.
• Can you get the physical card? Check whether shipping is available, what it costs, and whether the cost is shown before you confirm.
• What does a trade-in give you? Some services give store credit, some give something else. Know which before you open a pack.
• Who is it for? Responsible services set an age limit and say which places they serve.

How WaxRoom approaches it

WaxRoom is not open yet. It is being built around a few simple rules:

• One real, professionally graded card in every pack. The packs being built today use PSA-graded cards.
• Each pack lists the cards that can be inside it.
• The card is drawn before the animation starts, and the animation never changes it.
• After you open a pack, you can keep the card, ship the real card to your door, or trade it in for WaxRoom credit. Trade-ins give credit, not cash.
• WaxRoom is planned for adults 18 and over in the United States.

For more on where the cards come from and how shipping works, read how WaxRoom picks and ships real graded cards.