Hi all, I have recently discovered the Web Series and was having difficulty finding a ton of background on it. Does anyone know how to tell the difference between a first edition or unlimited pack? Why does this promotional series seem so much less emphasized than others? It has some of the best arts in my opinion and feels like Legendary Collection for amazing Japanese artworks.
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A.f.a.i.k. you’ll have to look at the cards within it unfortunately. The Pokémon Web booster packs are transparent, but I don’t think there is a difference visible from the front insert card, based on my sealed Pokémon Web booster packs containing the 1st/unlimited edition Moltres:
Also, in case you or anyone else reading this are unaware: the Holofoil cards that are in the packs can be deducted from the barcode on the blue inserts.
All the barcodes for the Pokémon Web booster packs will be of this form: 4521329 013AA B, where the B is a random digit that can be ignored, but the AA can be used to determine which Holofoil Rare is in the pack:
01-04 = Dark Venusaur
05-08 = Dark Charizard
09-12 = Moltres
13-16 = Dark Blastoise
17-20 = Articuno
21-24 = Zapdos
25-28 = Gengar
29-32 = Machamp
Greetz,
Quuador
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This is just some of the basic stuff I know.
This set was just a set of re-printed cards released via blind booster pack (had a blue insert so you cant directly see the cards) of 10 cards, 9 normal and 1 holofoil.
This pack could only be purchased online making it 1 of the only 2 sets that was distributed that way. The other being the World Championship Pack from 2007. It was a Japan only exclusive and was never released in English.
Card info:
Tangela-005 and Electrode-026 were featured as cards in Pokemon Card GB2 for the GameBoy Colour, illustrated with the original card layout from base, with a GB logo. The prints in this set are the only physical versions of these cards released.
Ivysaur-001 and Wartortle-009 come from the original intro pack from 1999.
Magikarp-035 is the reprint of the very famous University Magikarp promo and is the only other reprint copy sharing that art.
Moltres-043 , Articuno-045, Zapdos-046 are holofoil variations of the ANA promos from 1999 featuring new artwork which was used originally used in the US Pokemon 2000 Movie promotion version of the cards.
Gengar-047, Machamp-048 are reprint of the Masaki promo cards and are 2 of the 5 Masaki cards which were re-printed.
Rest of the cards are re-prints of Base set through Rocket with some shared artwork from the Vending Sheet series. There are also some promo cards in this set.
As far as I know, the unlimited is slightly rarer than the first edition version although I am not sure if there is much difference in the pricing. The blue insert also moves/shifts inside the pack allowing you to see the cards so it is easy to know what holofoil card is present in the sealed pack of cards. This means it will be possible to identify if the cards inside are unlimited or first edition (I might be wrong since I have not checked this myself).
Edit: @Quuador beat me to it with images of the 2 variants.
Cheers!
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One of my favorites - definitely under appreciated!
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Love the Web series. I’m one card away from completing a PSA 10 Unlimited Holo set! The E-reader boarder really adds something special to the classic artworks.
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Some additional info, looks like when you made a purchase of the pack you could immediately see the card online that you got via the Pokémon Card Browser. I wish we could still access this database 
買ったカードの中身がみえる!!
注文手続きが全て終了した後の画面にある下のリンクボタンをクリックすると、カードブラウザが立ち上がって、買ったカードの中身を見ることができる！
Google translate
You can see the contents of the card you bought!!
When you click the link button below on the screen after completing the order procedure, the card browser will launch and you can see the contents of the card you purchased!
https://web.archive.org/web/20020203214215fw_/http://www.pokemoncenter-online.com/detail.msp?id=1020
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I’m loving this thread.
The Web Series is one of my favourite sets of all time. It just fascinates me.
To my surprise there are so many interesting facts about the web series and some of them are rarely stated. So here is a short summary of my favourite facts about the web series. Please feel free to correct me if I got something wrong:
- First Japanese set focusing on reprints
- One of the earliest e-reader border cards ( they can not be read by an E-Reader though)
- One of the earliest sets with new back side
- Only includes gen 1 with the exception of Maril
- No English release
- Only available online
- The cards in the set are numbered from 1 to 48. They placed Pikachu at 25 so Pikachu has the same number in the set as it’s original Pokédex number.
- The rarities in the set are interesting. For example Dark Weezing. In its original release Dark Weezing had a star rarity. In the Pokémon Web set it has an uncommon rarity. Same goes for example for dark slowbro. Usually reprinted cards nowadays retain their original rarity or even get a higher rarity with different artwork. So I think they made an interesting choice back then to change the rarities downwards.
- Some cards weren’t available as non holos in Japan before the release of the web series for example Dark Alakazam, Nidoking and Ninetails.
- The legendary birds in the set with the used artwork were previously released only outside of Japan as a movie promo. They were actually reprints of the original Japanese ANA airlines promos which used different art. But in Japan the artwork from the movie promos release was first published in the web series and on top of that these are holo versions while they were only released as non holo outside of Japan.
- Another fun fact about the legendary birds. They are actually not a straight reprint either because they added a weakness to each of the birds for the web series that wasn’t included in the movie promos and was also not included in the ANA promo print.
- Some cards have slightly zoomed in artwork. I originally thought its only the placement of the border that makes it look like the art has a different size. But that isn’t true. When comparing for example Magikarp with the original released university Magikarp it’s noticeable (and measurable) that the artwork is slightly zoomed in for the web series.
- Purchase limit of 10 packs per person
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Just a small info.
There is a new video on Instagram posted by TheFineCard (I really like them no hate here) and I feel that the video is misleading. What stated in the video is not accurate. It states that it was a packaging mistake that the holo in a Web Series booster was visible by sliding the cards. This is false.
While it is true that you could see the holo when sliding the cards inside the pack it’s totally not true that this was a mistake.
As we know you could even check the contents of a web series booster after purchase directly online on the website (as stated above by kev) . So you were able to check your boosters content even before recieving it. (And when you received it there was the code from which it’s possible as well to know which holo is included).
I just wanted to clarify it since misinformation spreads fast nowadays and that account has almost 50k followers. I just think that video completely missed the cool points of the web Series.
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Hi again. I wanted to add these screenshots from Trainers Magazine vol. 13. I added the original as well as the translation.
Based on this I’ll update the list with notable features of the web series that I posted a few post earlier.
Edit:
As we know it was possible to see the contents of the packs online after purchasing them on the PC website. I think the barcode on the back can tell us not only the holo card that’s inside but probably it tells us the combination of cards that can be found inside one pack. I’ll do some research about this and see if I can proof this theory. (I know it’s a stupid effort because basically you can see the cards through the cello but I just want to research it for historical reasons).
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Unlikely because all barcodes have the exact same structure (4521329 013AA B) … Quuador’s post from above explains better this structure.
It might tell us the combination of cards if barcodes were totally different from one another …
The pages of Trainers Magazine Vol.13 you’ve shown show the information about this expansion. Vol.13 is the first one to mention Web (even in the cover they mention this expansion)
Btw, unrelated, but VS was the last expansion in having the Card List released in separated booklets (VS card list booklet was released along Trainers Magazine Vol.13). Web was the first expansion whose card list was integrated in a Trainers Magazine (in this case, Trainers Magazine Vol.15).
Vol.14 introduced massive changes to the Trainers Magazines in general and one of them was this … Card Lists are no longer an appendix and are now part of the Magazines themselves.
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Hi Thanks a lot for your reply and the additional Screenshots! I didnt see them before I think! 
And regarding the barcodes. They dont need to be different in order to dertmine whats inside. The PC told you basicly what cards you will get in the pack you bought so they must have been a way for them to tell. They didnt just tell you the holo they told you all cards in the pack. The only way they could do so must have been by scanning the code.
So I think maybe the comination of possible numbers determined the cards inside. For example we have this structure:
4521329 013AA B
so that means we have numbers replacing the AA from 01 to 33 and we have numbers from 0 to 9 to replace the B (The B doesnt matter for the holo but it might matter for the other cards). It could be that a certain combination of these stands for a preset combination of cards.
Given that for each holo we have 36 combinations of numbers (for numbers replacing AA and each number can be combined with a B from 0 to 9).
Im not sure myself but Ill dig into this 
Its fun
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This was my thought as well when I first heard about the AA-portion being for the holos, but it’s very difficult to verify. There are barely any sealed Pokémon Web booster packs left.
I’m already glad the holos were known by the AA portion of the barcode, since it helped a lot when trying to find the 1st and unlimited edition booster packs containing the Moltres I wanted.
I didn’t knew the website showed you the contents as soon as the packs were bought, that’s interesting! That does indeed make it logical the AA+B combination could be used to determine the entire content of a booster pack, instead of just the holo. TIL, thanks for sharing, and good luck in your research.
Greetz,
Quuador
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I think it’s a cool and unique feature of the Web series. Without your research about the AA numbers I would probably never know that you can tell the holo from just looking at the numbers.
But you are right. The data source is indeed a problem if I want to figure out if the combination with the B numbers tells us more about the content. I only found 3 pack openings on YT and I opened one of my own. But with the variety of numbers that sample size is way too small.
If anyone here opened a WEB Series pack an still remembers the cards inside the pack + the code I’d be delighted if you could share this info with me 
I found out that the B number doesn’t start at 1 but starts at 0 (so 0 - 9).
The numbers of cards of each rarity makes me think that they aren’t evenly distributed. For example we got 8 cards with non holo star rarity. And if looking at the B numbers we have 0 to 9 ( so 10 possible numbers for B). With that it’s not possible to evenly distribute the non holo rares.
This makes me think that not all combinations of cards are actually existent. But I’m unsure which logic lays beneath this.
But this means some cards must have occupied more slots than others on an uncut sheet.
I think this can only be solved with more data.
I’ll update as soon as I have some news.
Kind regards
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FYI, it wasn’t my research. Someone else shared it on the forum in an older thread, and I simply mentioned it in this thread.
I’ll see if I can see which cards are in my Moltres Web booster packs without opening/damaging them when I have some time, if it helps.
Greetz,
Quuador
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