I think the experience of discovering “Shadowless” is something that stays with every collector. It would be a fun idea to share the precise moment, situation and with what card you guys discovered it.
Here is mine:
When I got back into Pokémon due to the 2016 hype-wagon I bought my first cards at the city I was renting for college. One was a Shadowless Nidoking and the seller did state that but I really didn’t pay much attention. As with every hobby I jump in, as soon as I entered I started devouring every piece of information available regarding the first items released and the most rares with a pathological and accelerated mixture of anxiety and thirst for knowledge. When I learned about “Shadowless” it was due to a comparison between an Unlimited and Shadowless Venusaur like 15 minutes after arriving home with my new purchase. Since that moment I was pretty happy owning my Shadowless Nidoking.
Note aside, Shadowless is indeed my favorite Pokémon set. I feel the mixture of being the first set released and the saturated/vibrant colors is something unmatchable till this day.
(My fav Base Set card and the best “Shadowless” looking is Venusaur) (yes more than Gyarados)
Sometime during 2009 while scouring the internet for every nanobytes worth of information about Base set. Though I think it goes back further than that in terms of seeing Shadowless cards.
I arrived to Pokémon TCG very late (around Steam Siege - XY Evolutions), so I haven’t opened a Base Set booster when I was starting …
I realized that Shadowless existed when I was researching about Base Set and its variants … I remember I got extremely confused because I didn’t know the differences between Shadowless and other variants … After some time, I learnt about the differences … That happened some years ago …
Moral I learnt is that pages such as Bulbapedia sucks regarding card variants and you can learn everything by talking with collectors.
This is a great topic! I knew about shadowless cards as a kid, I can remember every one I saw. There were only a handful of cards, everything else was unlimited. To this day, when I buy a collection and come across a shadowless card, I still go “whoa thats a shadowless card”.
Around december 2019 / januari 2020 when i finally had the funds to start collecting some childhood nostalgic Pokemon cards.
Back then i thought it was crazy cards could go to $1000+ prices.
I thought 1st edition was too expensive and at the same time i found out about shadowless being a good alternative.
Shadowless Venusaur is also my favourite card with Alakazam as a close 2nd.
I’m much more of a slow-burn and digest person. I agree with you on the nostalgia and mystery behind shadowless, just giving it the most “cool” factor of any release, though unintentional.
I learned about shadowless pretty early on in '99 or '00(?). My first shadowless was a hitmonchan I saw in my cousin’s collection. She was a princess, and always got things as soon as they hit shelves, so she probly got a couple early packs in stores which were shadowless.
We were looking at our pokemon collections (mine was all JP because yata, and I had mostly stuff beyond Base, Jungle, Fossil. ). But she had this hitmonchan with a different frame. I traded her a blaine’s arcanine - JP and not available in english, but also 120 attack, which meant it was better, right? - Erika’s Vileplume, a base electrode EN, and some rocket commons , I think. I traded several cards, and my first holo card, but I think it was worth it.
We naturally just recognized that the drop shadow was missing, and I later realized first edition cards also lacked the drop shadow. I can’t remember when I started calling it “shadowless”…
…But I did call unlimited “shadowed” as a kid, instead of calling the first “shadowless”. To me, shadowless has always been how they were “supposed to be”.
never understood as a kid. when i got back into the hobby shadowless was going for a pretty penny
BUT the ignorance on this topic can also be a huge advantage to those in the know. I recently purchased a binder with a shadowless mewtwo in it.
This was the only shadowless card in the binder, none of the commons or anything so i assume the person got it through a trade and probably didnt understand he was getting something more rare/valuable
there are a lot of ppl cashing out their old binders and dont understand the differences
Sometime in the early 2000s. I had a couple shadowless/1st ed cards then. I remember reading on some kind of pojo-adjacent website back then that the shadowless/1st edition was much rarer. I organized my binders by set number (one card per slot) and would prioritize 1st > shadowless > unlimited
Growing up in Illinois I never saw 1st edition as a kid, EVER. Even in the dedicated card shops
Guess it didnt make its way out to us from the west coast
It’s theorized that shadowless was an even smaller print run than 1st edition due to graded populations, but in the early days psa didnt really respect Pokémon and I dont believe they originally distinguished between shadowless and base. However, I assume these copies have exchanged hands plenty by now and most would opt for a reholder so i still believe shadowless is more rare
I’m one of those fortunate east coast kids who got them in when pokemon was born in the US! The first pokemon card I ever saw was shadowless Ponyta, in a new neighbors driveway. And my first ever pack had a shadowless ponyta, diglett, and magnemite. Those are why those among a few others are the most special to me, and that memory of seeing my first pokemon cards is one of my fondest from childhood, no doubt. Definitely a stark, big photographic memory. When I reentered hobby for the first time in 2012 the first thing I went for was shadowless complete set, and getting back Blastoise was a very happy day. I never got a shadowless box though, something I regret, since I had an option for guaranteed shadowless box for $700, so I opted for unlimited for $300. Big regret… but at least I bought the singles at the time. Shadowless zard was $40, blasty was $20!
I suppose I realized shadowless existed when some months later I saw unlimited came out around the town, and it probably went something like this in my mind when I began comparing them upon examination:
It would have been sometime around 2006 that I clicked there were noticeable variants of Base outside 1st edition out there.
Both 1st edition and Shadowless are pretty scarce in the UK, and were almost non-existent back in the day; I actually don’t remember ever seeing a single one of either variant outside of magazine scans growing up.
It was while hunting for a decent Charizard that the lightbulb moment came - I was browsing eBay and noticed the occasional US listing had more appealing looking copies, and it took me a while to pin down that there were actual differences in the card, besides just the colour tones. Once I realised, I quickly snagged a Shadowless Zard from the States and felt like I was in on a cool little secret.
It was around 2015-16 (when I started collecting again), considering though that the difference between 1ed and shadowless wasn’t super clear to me.
I even bought a bunch of them, mainly commons, before realizing it wasn’t my thing.
As an european collector I actually never saw a proper shadowless in my childhood: 1st edition italian, french and german cards are all based on unlimited “layout”.
Many kids had English cards of course, but obviously unlimited ones.
So yeah, that’s what shaped my taste.
I’m guessing some time in the mid 00s. I don’t remember exactly when it was, but I remember reading about it and then going through all my old cards to pick out the shadowless ones.
I feel like remember noticing the difference as a kid in like 99 too, but at the time I didn’t think anything of it.
I actually knew shadowless cards cause my cousin gave me a few commons and uncommons when he was visiting from Canada. I looked through the cards a lot and when my cousins got me some base set packs I saw the difference in the shade with the cards with it being lighter and one was darker. My parents then bought me a theme deck and the blackout deck was shadowless and I saw the pattern. As time went on I kept all the shadowless cards in one section of my binder and the unlimited ones in another section. I remember growing up I read about 1st edition and shadowless and then unlimited. I always knew they had something different as more sets came out no other set had shadowless. I remember back in probably 2008-2009 was with a friend and I saw a shadowless booster box that had a rip in the seal and they only wanted $40 dollars for the box as Yugioh was the big hype and pokemon was on the downside. I bought it home and i did pull all the big cards but the fun interesting thing was this box was one of the rare error shadowless boxes in which the last 3 cards were always 1st edition. I still have all those old shadowless cards to this day but of course as a kid the condition was not the best.
I had a magazine checklist I used as a kid and I remember noticing some of the cards looked different from the copies I had. I did not learn about the shadowless print however until 2017 when I joined e4
). But she had this hitmonchan with a different frame. I traded her a blaine’s arcanine - JP and not available in english, but also 120 attack, which meant it was better, right? - Erika’s Vileplume, a base electrode EN, and some rocket commons , I think. I traded several cards, and my first holo card, but I think it was worth it.
