I have a sealed Brushfire deck that is likely shadowless (deck is upper half of box, etc). Is it worth opening the deck?
My collector friend says I can grade and sell the cards individually, but it feels like it might not be worth it, especially if the ninetails could have glue damage. What does everyone think?
I’m optimizing for financial outcome.
There is a lot to unpack here. You have most if not all of the infomation laid out before you though. Some things to consider are where you live since the tariffs are going to affect grading and it also could depend on your buyers. (Less people may be buying because of tariffs.) If youre noticing sales for those individual cards are indeed selling then I would proceed how you want. Was it a deck you already had, or what did you pay for it as well?
Its a gamble on just being shadowless, now add on the chance that it will have a gradable holo. Decks have already documented issues getting high grades because the way they were packaged, and that was several years ago. My opinion is that a decent grade shadowless ninetales probably wont be enough to be worth ripping but gambles sometimes pay off. Maybe its a no damage error deck?
Post if you open, best of luck.
As with most sealed product in this hobby, opening/grading will likely result in a net loss.
I’m not a theme deck expert but my understanding is that if it’s shadowless it’s all but guaranteed to have the stain on the holo. Also, I’ve heard many people say PSA doesn’t use the “stain” qualifier for the theme deck cards anymore and they’re just grading them in the 3-4 range.
Don’t think about it in dollars. It’s highly likely -EV to open a sealed deck.
But do you want to open it?
Would it make you happy?
If it’s worth the experience for you, do it
So 1-2 years ago I had a similar internal deliberation about a potentially shadowless overgrowth deck. It had all the signs of being shadowless, so I pulled the trigger and opened it.
…Only to find out it wasn’t shadowless, but packed the same exact way and the holo had the notorious glue stains 
I did grade some of the cards and got enough 10’s to do better than break even, but I learned my lesson lol.
Some things are just better left sealed
Thanks for response! It was a deck I already had. Somone on Ebay offered to buy it for $350
What graded cards ended up helping you get to the break even? I have an offer at $350 on ebay and it feels like it’s hard to surpass that.
$350 for a brushfire deck?! Wow those have gone up. Also kinda impressive because there are several possible shadowless decks on ebay between $300-325
In my opinion, no, keep it sealed.
Bulbasaur, Ivysaur, beedrill and magikarp
Nope as it’ll have glue stain on the holo that you can’t get off (Shadowless had the holos as the first card which the glue from the deck seal bleeds onto), so instant 8, even if it’s mint.
Source: me, graded an 8 and it was a gem, so I cracked it and used it for Arita fodder.
You can see the the glue all over the right side of the holo.
So clean otherwise.
Keep it sealed, like others have said the glue damage makes it highly unlikely to get a high grade holo. It’s also a crapshoot that the rest of the cards dont have some small amount of damage due to how these cards were packaged in the decks.
Unreleated side note, I remember my friends mom freaking out on a drug store employee for selling “fake” cards after we opened theme decks and got shadowless cards.
Did you originally grade it with PSA? If so did it have the ‘ST’ qualifier?
I graded it after they basically stopped using the ST qualifier.
Part of my issue with psa are all these changes that are only really to benefit their time-costs.
Interesting… thanks for the info! TCA gaming mentioned in one of his videos that after PSA got rid of the ST qualifier the best he could hope for was a 3 or 4. The fact that you got an 8 without the qualifier makes me wonder if there’s some inconsistency with how PSA treats these cards now. The video was pretty old though so maybe things have changed since then 
