Quick little anecdote of the week. Passed by one of the LGS around me that I use to consign certain things, and as I was there I noticed some Venusaur EX tins and a few Zard ones near the HF stuff… I found it a bit strange, since I’ve only ever seen these tins in a store in recent times in some reaaaallly random stores that aren’t known for carrying TCG products and I obviously pick them up when I run into them.
Anyways, the original 2014 tins that I used to buy and that I cracked tons of over the years have the UPC/SKU code whatever you want to call it ending with “109195” (I just confirmed as well as I have empties still piled up). But the *main* indicator, for me at least, is when I do ever see these tins is I look at the bottom for the year. If I see 2014, I’ve never had any issues in what the contents were. If I see 2016 (the reprints), I avoid since they don’t interest me.
2014 tin contents → the promo card, a tin code and 4 booster packs (2 x Furious Fists + 1 x Flashfire + 1 x Plasma Blast) for me at least in Canada, this has always been the contents of those tins. I’ve seen on Youtube some other ones being opened with some other variant like I think Legendary Treasures and such, but I think the SKU/UPC would be different on those and the region or the destined market of those variants were Europe/UK (the YT people that have opened those always seem to have accents) or Australia. This tin says Pokemon Company 1995-2014.
2016 tin contents → SAME 2014 promo card, a tin code + 4 booster packs (2 x Evolutions, 1 x Fates Collide and 1 x Steam Siege) *lol* WITH a different SKU/UPC → ending with “105098”. This tin says Pokemon Company 1995-2016.
Long story short, the LGS’s price on the tins were meh and he claimed both variants for the 2 price differences. So the 2016 ones to be cheaper than the 2014 ones of course. I wasn’t interested, did my business and left.
Later during the day, I’m at a mall and pass by a big box, and notice some HF Ultra Premium Collection boxes at like below MSRP (by like 10$) and I also have their loyalty card and get an extra % off. So I didn’t hesitate and picked them up. As I’m leaving, the clerk calls me out and tells me that he actually has some new stuff that came from the distributor that they just didn’t have time to put on the shelves. He was super chill and offered to bring them out for me. Low and behold, those “2014 EX Power Trio Tins” were there in the pile. They didn’t receive much, but I quickly checked the back, saw the “1995-2014” and picked them up. I paid something like 18$ CAD for each tin thats like 15$ USD? For the Flashfire and Plasma Blast alone, these tins at that price are a no brainer.
Get home, crack the seal… and low and behold… 2 x Evolutions, 1 x Steam Siege and 1 x Fates Collide lmao. Definitely not stressed about getting a return if I feel up to it as they’re very painless to deal with as a retail store, but might just keep them for the promo cards and the pack average isn’t too bad. But I’ve NEVER opened a 2014 tin of these and had 2016 contents. But yeah, the SKU/UPC was the 2016 one just with 2014 as a “misprint”.
So in the event these did pop up and become available to any of you either through the distributors or through stores, just be cautious. There’s a few new ones as well that have popped up on eBay, and I follow those since I’ve been waiting for the Flashfire and PB packs to become a little bit harder to get to offload some of the sealed (real) 2014 tins I own. Clearly the Pokemon Company or if these were repacks by MJ Holding since the seal is a clear one on tins, someone made the mistake. Unless, this has always been the case and I just never ran into that issue.