I recently acquired an opened base set booster box from a pretty trustworthy source. The packs themselves are in great condition and don’t appear to be tampered with, however, I opened one pack to make sure everything was legit and made an unusual discovery. The cards in the pack were ordered 3 uncommons, 5 commons, 1 rare, 2 energies. The rare was a holographic Poliwrath and all the cards appear pack fresh, but I’ve never seen WOTC order cards in this way. Has anyone else seen this before? Should I be concerned?
I was planning on hanging onto them for awhile as an investment and possibly reselling some packs in the future, but I’m worried that my future buyers will also find this strange and think that I searched the packs.
That’s how I’ve always seen them before . . . I don’t know if I should just return the whole box or not. The only one I opened had a holo and shows no signs of being tampered with besides the card order being abnormal. It would be weird for someone to reorder the cards and reseal the packs, without taking the holos out right?
Base Set packs have a lot of variations, whilst the most common is the 5 commons, 2 energies, rare and 3 uncommon, your pack could just be from the odd factory that had this different order.
By chance if your packs the light coloured variation packs with the smaller “pokemon trading card game rectangle box?”
I never knew the “Trading Card Game” boxes were different sizes on some packs, but yes, they are exactly like you described (lighter color, smaller box). Is this a known factory production variation?
It’s a bit of a shit to return it now that it’s opened and 1 pack down if there is actually nothing wrong with it. My advice would be weigh the packs and if you have 11 more heavy packs then I wouldn’t worry.
I’m not sure if it’s known or not, but there are always variations with base set unlimited packs. There was about 7 prints, and there are packs like the ones you’ve opeend, and also the darker packs with the larger and more ‘solid’ rectangle’ showing trading card game. I really don’t know if the packs have been searched, but in my opinion it’s unlikely since in those packs holos can always be found, so theres not much incentive to open up and reseal them packs only looking for charizards.