Is shadowless unlimited?

[pfm]

Shadowless Vs. 1st edition print runs

I looked for a guide on this and couldn’t find it so I apologize if someone answered this already in the forum somewhere. Does anybody have an educated guess on the ratio of 1st edition base to shadowless base? Thanks!

Shadowless vs First Edition Base

Was wondering what you guys think about the scarcity of first ed base vs. shadowless on the open market, and do you think shadowless cards will begin to disappear like first edition base? Scott has said in his videos that shadowless may be more scarce than first edition, but those holding shadowless cards may not see the difference with the shadow and put more value on the first edition symbol. Through a ton of my searches over the last few months I have seen many shadowless cards in people’s c…

There has been a lot of discussion in this topic. The general consensus is that 1st edition and shadowless were not independent print.

@hammr7

The story we heard in the early 2000’s was that all the original run (1st edition and Shadowless) were supposed to be 1st edition. The 1st Edition stamp was a separate, independent process, after the card was printed. WOTC didn’t have enough packing materials to package all the 1st edition cards. Originally, they were going to get more boxes and booster foil. But Pokemon exploded when it was released in the US. Rather than hold up distribution by holding back first edition cards, WOTC decided instead to not stamp the remaining 1st Edition sheets. The last part of the print run (or maybe a smaller second print run) was packaged as Unlimited and shipped out to meet the demand. That bought WOTC the time to adjust the artwork and text as necessary for the much larger Unlimited run, which was huge by comparison to both Shadowless and 1st edition.

This story checks out with the evidence presented above and some of the points made in the thread linked above. The stamping is an independent process from printing on the uncut sheets. The first print run was intended to be all 1st edition but instead was partially released as shadowless unlimited, presumably to get the cards onto the market faster. At some point the energy alignment was fixed and the stamps went from thick to thin. They printed more, made some 1st edition to make up for the shortage. It’s unclear if any of the prints were shadowless unlimited only. But what is clear is eventually they added the shadow and printed unlimited only