I’m curious If some people can chime in with their personal knowledge of collections they know of or just opinions you have to help understand the distribution of PSA 9 and 10 shadowless and 1st edition shadowless holos.
I am collecting all the shadowless holos and I have noticed the PSA 9 1st edition base is much more liquid than the shadowless set, with both categories having somewhat equal pops in 9. I can always find multiple auctions each week on both eBay and fanatics of 1st, but shadowless supply can be overall pretty dry.
I’m wondering why this is, could a lot of the shadowless supply be owned by a few big whales ( like one guys owns 30 mewtwo psa 9 for instance)? Or do people just not feel motivated to list their shadowless at current market prices? Perhaps other reasons?
I’m a shadowless collector mainly and have spent stupid money of the last 6-7 years on the set trying to regrade a BGS 9.5 set.
There are a few reasons why less are on the market vs 1st ed (in my opinion).
Shadowless PSA 9 and 1st ed PSA 9 are more or less the same pop, but Shadowless 10s are much rarer due to print quality. Shadowless and 1st ed were part of the same print runs, but 1st ed got the stamps.
During the transition to Unlimited, they re-used some initial 1st ed prints (without the stamps) as WOTC never liked wasting produce - which is where the term “Shadowless” was born. As they were later cuts from the 1st ed prints, they often have dull cut edges and silvering on the left border or are way more OC - meaning less are 10 worthy from factory.
In todays market, I see less Shadowless 9s vs 1st Ed 9s as:
Flippers buy 1st ed to grade and resell as the auction prices are higher, so there are more auctions
A lot of collectors see shadowless as undervalued right now - and less are on the market, more are in collections
Most of the 1st ed you see on auction are older certs, meaning likely not as “high condition” as newer cert 9s (trigger warning for efour)
It is hard to grade 9s of shadowless, most are 7-8 pack fresh - so you dont see that much coming into circulation
Shadowless is just better than 1st edition - and I’m buying them all up.
Ps If anyone wants to sell sweet PSA 9s to me, I will always overpay for clean copies!
You can probably find threads from a decade ago saying shadolwess is underrated. I can still count the handful of shadowless cards I saw during the 90s. To this day, when I see a shadowless card, I have the same reaction I did as a kid. With that said, its habitually been the middle child.
I agree with the dryness! Relatively speaking this is also the case for 1st edition base compared to a few years ago (e.g., 2018-2020). I think many of these historic cards now are in the hands of long term collectors that are not looking to sell any time soon, myself included.
I disagree with your third point on older certs simply because there have been very little ungraded mint supply for these cards for a very long time. Majority of the pop will remain 4x certs and lower. Within those lower certs plenty are still worth their grades, but those copies are less likely to resurface to the market.
I also agree that shadowless still is undervalued.
I think it’s just that thing of like if you are going to spend that much, might as well get the expensive one. Most normies prefer 1st editions anyway - just look at Japanese, Unlimited Crystals are technically rarer but they usually go for less, with the Zard being the exception but only on a handful of auctions.
I think that and education is a big compontent in the value discrepency.
But personally I see it doing fine value wise - it’s essentially a misprint 1st edition(?).
The lore behind it makes it interesting and gives it a certain romance.
Correct!
I would say there is some validity to this, however there are A LOT of 5-6 certs which were (I may be slightly off on this) graded in 2020-2021 - meaning a lot were graded during the pandemic boom - likely people who had them in collections but who didnt know what they were, saw something in the news and then sold them to people who graded them or had them graded themselves.
I see a few new certs now and then but it’s very few.
It’s my favourite set been a collection goal of mine for a long, long time.
I’ve got the full set in BGS 9, but I also have a few 9.5s (trio, plus Alakazam, and two Raichus) that I am grading along the way (or buying, but they almost never come up as most are pop 10 or less).
shadowless has always been a pita to sell. i think if u have 10s now they would go for some decent money since they have been rarely at auction during the boom boom.
1st Ed base has seen a pretty big jump in prices recently which is why more are coming up for auction recently with collectors or flippers cashing out, whereas shadowless hasn’t done much so a lot fewer collectors are selling them currently. Most of the 1st edition base holos are 2-3x from 2023 prices and that’s definitely not the case for shadowless.
