Hey everyone, so I am a bit of a shadowless nerd and have opened a few blisters in recent years (one with a blastoise pull!) and I recently picked up on something that I don’t think many people are aware of - that may help to identify if a short crimp BLISTER is more or less likely contain Shadowless cards.
Sidenote: this is still an absolute work in progress and I would love additional community involvement on solving this question!
So let’s dive in…
Shadowless Pack Variations: Short crimp vs Long crimp
So as you may know there are 2 versions of shadowless booster packs:
Long crimp: guaranteed shadowless
Short crimp: 50/50 (anecdotal evidence for the actual win rate)
This is my pic 
And short crimp
There are many more short crimps available for sale online than long crimps, and short crimps are valued quite a bit less than long crimps, as you would expect.
How can you tell which contain shadowless cards?
I thought about trying to see if there was any way to get a better indication of whether a short crimp BLISTER pack contains shadowless or unlimited cards and I discovered something that is likely not completely accurate, but more indicative.
Of course - the only TRUE way to certainly guarantee that a pack contains shadowless cards is to open it.
The second best way is to know of the origin of the blister case that it came from, and if other packs from the same case were opened, then the others are most likely going to be shadowless too (or not).
However I may have discovered a 3rd way to get a better indication if they contain shadowless or not.
My packs
So I recently bought a shadowless short crimp from a FB marketplace seller who claimed to fully not know if it was shadowless or unlimited.
Supposedly he had owned several, and sold them off over the years. No one told him if it was unlimited or shadowless (if they opened them).
Sadly in transit, the top left corner popped open so I decided to take the pack out and weight it. 21.20g, heavy.
Naturally I wanted to open it then and there!
However, I had opened a Long crimp in the past and I remember it being quite tough to open. The glue was quite strong and pulled up the cardboard backing.
This is where my Spidey senses started tingling and I started looking up other videos on YouTube of blister pack openings.
What I found was that most Shadowless (confirmed) blisters were quite tough to open, with usually the cardboard backing sticking to the plastic shell of the blister itself.
As you can see here, this is what it looks like on my long crimp opened pack.
And this (another) short crimp Shadowless that I opened (unlimited but pulled a zard lol)
As you can see by looking at the top of the blister plastic shell, the backing basically sticks to plastic on the long crimp, and basically tears on the short crimp.
I found some other examples indicating something similar.
Examples of backing sticking to the shell (being confirmed shadowless):
3.09: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jY58BB-jQLg
0.48: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSSx2nldfGw
1.14: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cF-a-Pul-TQ
Examples of backing not sticking to the shell (being confirmed shadowless unlimited):
“Hmm, this came off a little too easy” - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3P79NsqsRc
Examples of backing sticking but not shadowless:
2.28: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvT-7wCINM8&t=164s
Examples of unlimited blisters being opened -
Backing sticks to plastic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdyKKEFmtkM&t=226s
1.15 - super easy to open: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GU1tDx3Tx8&t=427s
So as you can see, the evidence shows that in most cases the way the blister opens may indicate if it’s Shadowless or not.
But what are the reasons behind this?
Id guess that WOTC change the glue they used for their blisters at some point. Later blisters (short crimp Shadowless and unlimited) used less tough glue and therefore were easier to open, whereas earlier blisters were quite tough.
Of course, this could be completely wrong but I find the process learning about this nerdy stuff super interesting!
My next step is to open my pack (it’s heavy at 21.2g) but we shall see if that happen.
Does anyone have any experience to share opening base blisters? Do share it!
Happy collecting.
Me after posting this
