Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

Shadowless base set theme decks

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cadethian

New Member
Is there a way to tell from the outside packaging if the contents will be shadowless?
I see some people on ebay claiming their sealed theme decks are shadowless, and I'd like to know if there's a way for me to confirm from the pictures.

Thanks!
 
Usually ones with gold stripes on the plastic the boxes are sealed with deem them shadowless. I'm not sure if it's 100% or not. Those people claiming their decks are shadowless are going buy the pictures of the cards on the boxes. From what I know, those pictures mean nothing about the cards inside. I'm sure all of those decks are Unlimited cards.
 
I think one of the listings claimed it was the copyright date on the back of the box that gave it away.
Could this be true?
 
Nope not true, as far as I know all the boxes were the same. I got burned by a couple of those sellers a while back.
 
if i remember correctly it had something to do with either the coin in the pack of the box or the damage counters.
 
I did a little digging and I have my old zap theme deck box, and I found this listing on ebay:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Pokemon-Zap...?pt=Trading_Card_Games_US&hash=item2ec5389506

What's interesting is that on the back of the box in the ebay listing, the pikachu card is on top of the two energy, and has a first edition stamp.
On my old deck box from a shadowed deck, the two energy cards are on top of the pikachu, so you can't see where the first edition stamp would be.

Could this indicate shadowless?
 
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All of the damage counters and coins were the same. I'm pretty sure about that.

There was a full set of boxes with that gold strip that sold about a year ago. I've seen boxes like that opened and they were all shadowless.

But that box difference intrigues me. However, I still don't think it means the cards inside are shadowless. WOTC often used extra containers for cards instead of printing new ones. :)
 
cadethian said:
Is there a way to tell from the outside packaging if the contents will be shadowless?
I see some people on ebay claiming their sealed theme decks are shadowless, and I'd like to know if there's a way for me to confirm from the pictures.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

A friend of mine who has all the theme display variants told me that if the display box had the gold strip it was shadowless or if it came from a display box without the WOTC labels on the cellophane the decks were shadowless.... I realize finding a Display box of 8 themes still sealed without the WOTC logos is probably harder to find but this guy said that was the only way to tell the Shadowless and regular print themes apart if hey did not have the gold strip.


I have a couple base starters set back. The Shadowless base starter opens from the side and display different cards on the back from the non-shadowless one. I cannot say all are like this but it may be an indication.

Shadowless Base Starter:

http://s1260.beta.photobucket.com/user/The-Charizard-Authority/media/DSC02796_zps4fefec92.jpg.html

Non-Shadowless Base Starter:

http://s1260.beta.photobucket.com/user/The-Charizard-Authority/media/DSC02797_zpsb602f0e6.jpg.html

---------- Post added 01/16/2013 at 08:47 PM ----------

It seems the themes did have some difference on the boxes. I just quickly browsed the Blackout themes and found these on ebay

I sold this one with gold strip:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Pokemon-Sea...310?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3ccb4adae6

Same back without gold strip:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Blackout-Po...D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

Different back no strip:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Pokemon...D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

The last one is a little fuzzy but the onix is definitely behind the other two cards instead of in front like the previous two. I am not sure this indicates anything at all but it does show there were different versions of the theme decks printed
 
there are certain ways to tell if the base set starter deck is shadowless or not thats a easy find.the shadowless theme decks are very very hard to kinda know since yes the gold strip ones guarentee 100% shadowless from my knowing and there are some that dont even have a gold strip that are shadowless one of my friends he brought a brushfire deck with the whole copyright thing and turned out shadowless.i also though it was the copyright thing on the back but it can mean unlimited or shadowless.from what i have known from just doing countless research and also countless checks on boxes just by pictures alone there are around 2-3 variants of the shadowless theme deck boxes that can have shadowless or unlimited cards.if you look closely at a shadowless deck and compare it to another deck of the same thing you will also notice the words on the box and the color of the box is abit different
 
Just want to let everyone know that I opened a Blackout theme deck and got shadowless cards.

The deck box has the Onix over the energy cards. The copyright is "1995, 1996, 1998, and 1999 Nintendo, Creatures, GAMEFREAK, 1999 Wizards of the Coats, Inc" You know, all the signs that the deck would be shadowed.

So pretty much, there is no sure fire way to tell :/
 
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