Hello together,
so as most of us know, unlimited runs of Japanese sets are usually harder to come by than 1st Ed.
Yet as I was looking through ebay, 1st Ed. was both less abundant and more expensive for certain Web Series cards. Is Web Series an exception to the rule that Japanese 1st Ed. is more common than unlimited?
Thanks in advance!
I have seen people state that unlimited web are more rare than 1st edition. But most people will probably still prefer 1st edition variants, so that might explain a higher price. Anyhow, Web series is still a fairly obscure set to come by regardless of 1st edition or “unlimited”.
If you look to the current pops on PSA you could so say. It all depends on the distribution and what has been sold online(as the cards were only sold online). And if what was not sold online has been destroyed or not. A complication in this is that I still dont know how you could opt online for Unlimited or 1st Edition as on the packs you cant see from the outside if its Unlimitied or 1st. Please correct me if i’m wrong this. It would also help if one of our japanese friends can comment if you could opt for Unlimited or 1st. So no 100% prove and still a lot of questions so probably we will never know for certain. As i’m an Unlimited collector I have some preference in this 
I have a web series booster pack. And it’s not something I want to try again but I’m pretty sure you can slide the pack so that the bottom of the card is visible and you can see the edition of what’s in the pack. As for which edition was the longer print run I’d assume the 1st edition would have been the most printed as it was only available for a short period of time.
I understand ( see this link : www.elitefourum.com/t/ocghps-stuff-sealed-unlimited-korean-base-set/14322/49 ) but I don’t think that this was done to determine 1st or Unlimited when selling or buying online 
. Happy to see you are on the same track that Unlimited has a lower volume.
Although I can’t answer the main question in this topic, I can shed some light on this question by @majomaal . You are correct in assuming there’s no way to tell if the contents of a Web Series pack is 1st Ed. or Unlimited. You can of course use the sliding trick @zebadee mentioned but people mainly used that to see what their Holo rare was for the pack!
The thing is though, it actually makes more sense to use the sliding trick to differentiate editions as the barcode / serial number will always tell you which rares are inside the Web Series pack. Sliding will reveal one card, but keeping track of the serial numbers will give you both rares for any given pack. Let’s take for example the left pack shown in the link by @majomaal :
It has the serial number 4521329 01331 2 and should always contain a Machamp as its Holo rare and a Raichu as its regular rare.
The serial number is in fact identical for its 1st Edition counterpart. You can see the proof by watching 30 seconds of this video:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=weAypV_u474
I’ve been keeping track of multiple serial numbers over the years, and it would seem they are clumped together.
The serial numbers concerning the same Holo rare have sequential numbers. Moltres shows 01310-01311-01312.
This could be coincidence as I’m working with a very tiny dataset, but imho it’s still worth mentioning!
Thx for your feedback. @melchior
Up to now I have seen ranges with a min = 1301 and max = 1332. As the set only contains 8 holo’s the following theory would fit :
1301-1304 = Dark Venesaur
1305-1308 = Dark Charizard
1309-1312 = Moltres
1313-1316 = Dark Blastoise
1317-1320 = Articuno
1321-1324 = Zapdos
1325-1328 = Gengar
1329-1332 = Machamp
Those values line up perfectly with my findings. There’s one remaining digit following this sequence and it ranges from 0-7.
So again describing a range of 8. I bet you can already guess how many non Holo rares are in this set, right?
This one looks like a digit 9 as the remaining one ?
Damn, that’s definitely a 9, yes. There goes that theory for the non Holo rare then.
I don’t have this serial number on record, do you happen to know its contents?
Dark Venusaur should be the Holo, but I’m curious about the regular rare!
Have you’ve seen all these ranges for the Moltres? So the theory in practice? Which codes are confirmed for the Moltres? The ones @melchior gave me thus far are 4521329 01310 7 and 4521329 01311 4. Does this mean all possible codes containing a Moltres are these 36?..
I currently don’t have any Web booster pack, but am looking for all Web booster packs in both 1st and unlimited edition containing the Moltres.
PS: If anyone has any sealed Web booster pack containing a Moltres, I’m willing to pay a nice penny for it (as well as the Australian WotC Moltres containing the Game Boy Color insert). If anyone has all 36 Web booster pack Moltres codes in both 1st and unlimited edition, I would especially appreciate it if I could buy it, haha. 
Greetz,
Quuador
I’m building on the theory and confirmation of @melchior with only examples/pictures found on the internet. So no practice by owning any sealed web pack.
Also by this confimation on Ebay , snapshots fron Buyee: Web Web2 Web3
As it looks the last digit is a sequence number where we still don’t have a agreed theory. My guess would be just the production run sequence. Again my guess.
