I met up with a guy on FB market place that claimed to have over 60 packs of fossil booster packs (did not inquire about weights). Says they were in his closet since '99 and that he owned a card store back in the day. He had about 10 packs with him when we met. This was my first time buying sealed vintage product so I told him that I would take a single pack and return for more after I did some research.
I paid $150 for this pack and would like to purchase half his collection (at a bulk price), but I really need your guys help to determine that they are not re-sealed first! This is going to be a huge investment for me.
Weight (with an uncalibrated scale) is 21.18grams.
Before I get into my concerns, here are some pics of the front, back, and the crimps:
My first concern is that the area between the edge of the pack and the crimp is sealed shut. From what I understand, you should be able to slide something thin (like a piece of paper) in-between and be able to touch were the crimp starts.
Second concern is that the ends on the back fold does not line up:
But I must say, the spacing is so perfect that its making me think that I’m mistaken about this.
Probably the biggest concern is that this is quite a bit of space between the top of the cards and where the crimp starts. Here is a picture I took after I slide the cards down and folder the upper end up:
Is there anything else that I should confirm to rule out the possibility of re-sealed? I don’t have any experience with vintage packs and all of the concerns I highlighted were gathered from random bits of advice around the web.
These look legit to me; some variation is expected. The space between the top of the cards and the crimp is 100% normal and standard, as is the back fold lines.
Thank you! Is there anything else you can think of that I should be checking? It’s just that I’m going to be spending thousands on these packs and I need to make sure they are 100% factory sealed.
I have just a few vintage packs, so I’m definitely not an expert by any means. But if you can dig into the person’s background (e.g. does he sell other pokemon things?), it might be useful to know. That, or just assume you are buying all light packs. Because these are loose packs from different products, you can probably expect some variance in weight that may not be indicative of an actual heavy vs light pack spread, meaning there might be heavier packs and lighter packs but they might still all be searched/light packs.
This pack looks fine. You’re going to get more information by just talking to the seller about where they came from and why they’re selling now. Bulk loose packs are probably light, especially 60 of them (as opposed to a multiple of 36).
For identifying “heavy” vs “light” packs from various sources, it would be worthwhile using an Electrician’s Metal Detector - I have found it to be far more reliable than weighing scales!
Oh weird, I hadn’t even heard of this before. Just looked up some random Youtube video using a metal detector on a Japanese Eevee Heroes box, and the result was 13/13 packs that didn’t trigger the detector were non-holos and 15/17 of the packs that did trigger the detector contained a holo rare or above (2 false positives).
Check so make sure they are all actually sealed. Check for signs they have been resealed- glue around the ends, incomplete/not completely sealed crimps, etc. Make sure the art and words are crisp and not blurry. Carefully spot check a pack against a high rez image of a verified pack online, and watch a few videos about this topic/watch a few openings to help familiarize you with vintage packs.
The metal detector is often used in Korea. So if you ever buy from Korean sites or sellers they will often give you a few packs for free that they refer to as “service” but often times don’t have anything worthwhile.
But as for your fossil pack, it looks all right to me. Good job being thorough and getting those pics.
Conspiracy theory? Pokemon company knew about this method, which is why they changed to a “holo in every pack” recently. Similar to when weighing packs was getting so out of hand that they added the different code cards to make weighing for holos unreliable.
