The 1998 Picachu CD has a number of cards and one of them is a shadowless Picachu. Is that card the same as one from the shadowless base set?
Different card stock, and slightly different coloring. Mostly a difference between being produced by WOTC and Media Factory.
So if sent to psa it would come back authenticated as a promo…big difference…correct?
It wouldn’t get a special label unless you can convince PSA to give you a special label. It’s not a battle I’d take on, but you can certainly try.
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What is a special lable? What kind of authentication would the give the card?
Obviously I don’t know a lot about this and I appreciate your help.
When PSA gives out a grade they ‘label’ the card too. Aka the text you see on the label, like ‘1999 Pokémon game Pikachu - shadowless’ instead of that you would need them to add something to the variant part (where it says shadowless). This isn’t currently in their system so it would need to be approved by their research team, when the research team looks at the card they’re probably going to assume it’s a normal shadowless Pikachu.
So it’s a lot of work as you’re going to have to educate the research team with sources that say the card is different, give them indications to tell them how to tell the two are different, and hope that they allow the new label to be created.
It’s not AS hard as I’m making it sound as you can probably find enough evidence to let them know it’s produced differently than a regular shadowless, but it’s not a sure thing either. It’s up to you if a different label is worth it to you or not.
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Thanks so much for taking the time to explain it to me.
I think if it comes back as a regular shadowless Picachu value wise it may be even better for me in the long run…am I right?
BTW Im trying to get some psa 10s from my collection so I’m picking out my best possibilities.
It’s already mentioned above, but the only difference is the card stock. One can be found in English Shadowless booster packs (or Shadowless Theme Decks) and is printed on regular US card stock. The other is released in Japan in the Pokémon Song Best Collection CD promo set on Japanese paper, which is ever so slightly thinner. If you have a flashlight and both cards (or this CD Promo and any regular Base Set non-Holo card) and shine through both of them, you’ll clearly see the difference.
In addition, the CD promo is usually lighter in color, as you can also see in the pictures of my quote below.
To quote my Base Set variations article:
And yes, they’ll probably worth similar in price when graded. The Base Set version would be harder to grade, but I don’t think a lot of people know about these differences (and PSA doesn’t differentiate the versions anyway), so value-wise they’re very comparable.
Greetz,
Quuador
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Wow learn something new on here every day!! 
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I’ve been trying for 20 years and finally gave up. I even sent in sealed cd packages (at least as sealed as they can be which was part of the problem) without luck. Someone else needs to pick up the mantle and good luck.
PS…it took me 6 years just to get them to designate ‘shadowless’ lol.
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Great information…thanks all of you.
I bought two CDs way back then. Opened one a while ago and I’m enjoying the beautiful cards, still have the other sealed CD.
Best of both worlds.
Two of everything. The collectors dream goal:)