From childhood all I really knew was that 1st edition existed. although I had a handfull of shadowless in my collection they were all treated the same.
Back in 2013-2015 when i had my pokemon realization, I likely saw some youtube videos explaining the differnces. My childhood pikachu was a shadowless red cheeks with the corner of the card bitten off…
Like many others here, I find shadowless cards to be so clean in appearance. perfectly balanced in terms of the borders. I found some pretty sweet lots of pokemon cards from back in the day that were majority shadowless. I still have all of those cards at my parents place and i like looking at them on occasion when I visit.
Personally, I didn’t realize shadowless existed until maybe 2017. After I started to get back into the hobby after the introduction of Pokemon Go.
What’s interesting is that a lot of collectors in Hawaii started with Japanese cards (at least those of us who started in 97-98). Back then, we didn’t really know about shadowless cards because most people weren’t into English cards. Given Hawaii’s strong Asian influence, most of the cards available at local stores were Japanese, and they were considered “cooler” compared to their English counterparts. English cards were a bit behind in the early days, so many of us stuck with the Japanese ones, which were always ahead. I’d say it wasn’t until the early 2000s, when more people started playing the TCG, that English cards started to catch on. But almost every kid in school here did know about no rarity base set cards which was neat.
I have a very specific memory of Base Venusaur from childhood - my dad took me to my LGS and I remember seeing it displayed on the back wall behind the glass counter, and it instantly became my favourite Base holo. The deep, rich green colours really made it stand out. Anyway, around 2011 when I temporarily got back into the tcg, I bought an unlimited base box to open to start my first binder since I was a child. I remember pulling Venusaur, looking at it and thinking… “this isn’t how I remember it looking as a kid… maybe I’m just remembering it differently, but it looks more washed out”. Anyway, after a brief google I soon found out that I must have seen a shadowless version when I was a kid, and then I learned all about the variants.
I had a ton of cards as a kid and i remember keeping two staryu in my special binder because i thought it was an error. If i remember correctly that was my first time seeing shadowless, but like a lot of us growing up with base set i didnt know it was an actual thing. I was probably 16 or so when i think i heard the term and then i realized i had a charizard and kept that for quite a while. Hes gone now, sad days.
I don’t remember when, but I do remember how. The formatting of the card is what I noticed first. Many shadowless cards have top-aligned rather than center-aligned energies, attack damages, etc. that could be misconstrued as fakes or errors unless you know the differences. I remember being confused about this difference in alignment, as most of the cards that I grew up with were Unlimited.
Probably around 2000 ish. I didn’t have any 1st Ed shadowless cards so it’s clear I didn’t open those packs, but we definitely opened base set packs. In elementary school I was always on the hunt for charizards and I traded a lot to get my shadowless copy. I still have it today.
I opened some packs of both 1st ed and shadowless at the time of release. It took some time to realize the differences after opening unlimited later on and seeing the side by side difference in my binder. I don’t remember what we actually called them back then but I do remember treating my shadowless Blastoise as if it were my first born.
I was very young during the WOTC times. Still collected like crazy but the idea of shadowless didn’t cross my mind at all. Hell, I can’t even remember noticing when a new set came out I just bought what was in the store and was surprised every now and then when a new Pokemon showed up.
I wasn’t super wise. Just enjoying the vibes for the longest time trading shining Gyarados for unowns
In my youth I never owned and can’t remember seeing any Shadowless cards. Since Shadowless cards were from the US, it doesn’t really surprise me I hadn’t seen them as a kid growing up in The Netherlands - Europe.
And tbf, in my collection of ~1000 cards as a kid I also had barely any Japanese or 1st edition cards. Probably less than 15 each, and just a handful of non-English cards in general (most foreign cards were of course Dutch, although even those I didn’t had that many, since my local toy store only ever sold English booster packs/decks). I do remember the exact amount of French and German Pokémon cards I had, since those had different names (which would be three French and one German, and I think I also had an additional German Trainer card iirc).
But yeah, Shadowless cards were among my first Pikachu order from TrollAndToad that started my collection back in September 2015, about halve a year before I joined the forum.
I owned many shadowless cards as a kid. When I would look through my collection in 2007-2010, I never understood why some cards base set cards looked so cheap and strange and off color.
In 2016 I eventually I learned these were shadowless cards!
Very interesting reading about how so many people learned about them. I always assumed they were known about.
About myself, when they switched to unlimited. Ive collected from the beginning and had bought a few first edition packs and shadowless when they were out but didn’t ever think about visible pack differences beyond 1st edition stamp on it. In 1999 once 1st editions were harder to find and unlimited was taking over and I went to trade a kid I knew some shadowless for low tier holos and he accused me of trading him fakes. Had to explain that it was real and show reference photos in guides and ultimately rip a shadowless caterpie to prove authenticity. Still sad about that caterpie card, it didnt deserve that.
Absolutely knew that they existed, since I grew up on the US east coast. Never really understood that there was anything special about them until I was an adult. I always just thought they were a different print style and never gave it much thought.
