So I just noticed something about my booster box that I never have: the logos are upside down and the seal-line is on the front side of the box. It’s as if the shrinkwrap was applied the wrong way. To my eye, the box appears totally legitimate except for this one discrepancy that I only just now noticed.
Has anyone seen a box with this same irregularity? I’ve been looking at images of boxes online and mine appears to be the only box with shrinkwrap like this.
Has anyone ever seen this before? I’m not suspecting my box is resealed necessarily, but I can’t find any other box that was sealed this way.
Shit, I’ve been looking at images for the past 30 mins and I can’t find a single box (of any set) that has shrinkwrap like mine. Now I’m starting to get slightly worried lol. FWIW, this box has been through multiple hands (including D&A’s Card World and Pokefeens) and the box clearly hasn’t been tampered with since it was in their ownership. It seems unlikely (but not impossible) that D&A’s Card World (who has dealt with thousands of vintage Pokemon booster boxes) would let a resealed box slip through the cracks.
Does anyone have any input? Or at least know of who I could ask about this? It’s a giant anomaly on a box that otherwise checks out in every other way.
I’m not sure that the sticker means much. It implies that at least the shrinkwrap itself is authentic, but that doesn’t mean the box couldn’t be a reseal.
I would contact businesses/people with sealed Dragon boxes and ask If they are willing to weigh their boxes for you.
Surely the weight of a Dragon box is very specific:
6 EXs and 6 regular holos per box
Reverses get the same treatment (text, foiling etc) regardless of rarity. The reverse holo rares still have the e-reader strip, but I have a hard time seeing how pulling one or two more of those in a box could affect the weight to any noticable degree.
The Charmander-line secret rares replace regular holos and not Ex cards (i.e not much of a variable in weight)
If you happen to have a box with more or less foil cards than usual, which can happen, then it gets complicated, but let’s hope you don’t.
EDIT: forgot about the sticker when typing this, but still may be worth a shot.
That’s a good idea. I just feel like there’s too much other material to make this reliable. The only way you’d be able to know for sure it’s a reseal through weight comparison is if the weight on mine was super off (like by multiple grams). If it’s a small variation (which would very likely be the case since the hypothetical resealer would’ve tried to match the weight nearly exactly) then it wouldn’t be conclusive. I’d imagine that authentic boxes can naturally vary by a gram or two, but maybe not?
Exactly. I’m not sure that the sticker shows anything in particular.
Also, in case people didn’t notice, there’s a spot where a sticker apparently used to be at top right of the front side. I’m not sure if there’s anything that can be gleaned from this, but I figured I’d mention it just in case it does have some relevance.
EDIT: actually, it might be relevant. I’m not sure what that sticker was, but that sort of sticker seems like it would probably be on the front of the box (which it is)? Unless it was a barcode, in which it would’ve been on the back of the box, I think?
Ok! After looking through pictures of hundreds of boxes, I finally found ONE box with upside down logo shrinkwrap and the seal on the front-facing side:
Better yet is this box was opened on video and is legit:
So this does show that it’s POSSIBLE that legitimate boxes can have shrinkwrap like mine. Still, it took me hours to find one other example lol, so it’s not common.
Wow! Good searching. I’ve never seen that listing! So one of the previous owners must’ve tried to remove that label for whatever reason.
It looks like if my box is a reseal, it was done at some point before that listing was created. At this point, though, I’m pretty confident it’s not a reseal. Just an ultra rare upside down shrinkwrap misprint lol. I’ve inspected it super closely at length and I just can’t find anything suspect. But maybe I’m wrong…hopefully not.
I’d breathe easy. At this point, someone would’ve had to reseal, slap on a distributor price sticker of 2003 prices (looks like $117.XX for box, $3.29 for pack), sell it to someone who eventually removed the sticker (likely to not remind buyers of the original cost), and then have it end up in your hands. I don’t think we’re at the master brain play of fakes yet of “place MSRP stickers on a resealed box in the hope they get removed years down the line so the box looks more legit”.
Great points. Yeah, I’m pretty confident it’s legitimate at this point. Thanks so much for your help! I don’t know how I’ve never seen that listing. I was only aware of the chain of custody from DA → Pokefeens → E4 member → me. It’s great to find out more about its history.
