Hey guys I had a question about the theme decks from 1999. I have two water blast decks and the backs are different. I noticed a couple of my brushfire and zap decks are different also. Some have damage counters pictured and some don’t. I also noticed pikachu behind the energies and in another box its in front. Is it just different designs of the packaging or are the cards possibly different? Thanks in advance!!
As far as I know, there is no difference in the jungle decks.
The base set decks “may” have shadowless cards, but there is no guarantee or sure fire way to tell, unless it is sealed with a gold strip. There are certain box designs that are said to be more likely to have shadowless cards, but any theme deck could have simply unlimited cards. Only sure way is to open and check of course, but then it’s not sealed anymore.
In the end, they are simply slight variations and the cards are “probably” what is normally expected.
Currently, there is no known way to differentiate between shadowless/unlimited '99 theme decks without opening them.
Well, aside from the gold strip decks.
yea thats true besides the gold strip but also if anyone does notice the word colors of the original base theme decks also change.
If there are no damage counters showing on top of the three cards at the back of the deck box, then you have an Unlimited deck, these decks also have ‘damage counters’ instead of ‘10 damage counters’ at the list of contents of the box, signs that tell you you have an Unlimited. There is no way to identify a Shadowless deck but that was one way to identify an Unlimited deck.
One way to show you have non-gold-strip Shadowless decks: if you have an 8-deck case with normal strips and one of the decks is Shadowless, then the rest of the decks are Shadowless too. This is the closest way to prove a non-gold-strip theme deck has Shadowless cards however you still need to open one deck if that was the ‘case’.
Geddit? ok sorry 
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Cool thanks for that tip on identifying unlimited decks!!! Good to know
I’ve personally opened unlimited and shadowless cards from decks with both of the identifiers he pointed out.
As a rule, unless there’s a gold strip, there’s no way to tell what theme decks contain.
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You have opened Shadowless cards from boxes without damage counters on the cards? Okay well that is news.
TCA educated the possibility of shadowless cards in theme decks in one of his older video and that is where I got my knowledge from. All Shadowless decks I have seen came from deck boxes with the counters on the cards. Thanks for letting us know.
Do you by any chance have a link to the video? Or know where I can see it
Yeah. TCA was guessing based on a sample of a few decks that he’d opened. He made a string of observations in those videos that don’t hold water. At one point he stated that the central card on the back of the box being in front of the trio makes the box shadowless (or something to that effect). That also proved untrue. It’s not his fault though, he was just experimenting.
I was big into theme decks a while back. I probably opened 30-40 a few years ago. Most of them were unlimited but I made some good money on the shadowless decks that I opened.
The dubious nature of their contents is the main reason why I got out of '99 theme decks for good.
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Yea that and the shadowless decks all have stained holos anyway lol