An eBay user has put up a shadowless Charizard Pokémon card for sale for $30,000. Nothing new there, but this particular Charizard sale has one huge difference. The coveted card is still sealed within its Base set booster pack. How does the seller know it holds a Charizard, the holy grail for Pokémon collectors everywhere? They've had it CT scanned.
According to the item's description, the seller, Restoreyouredatsun on eBay, sent some base set booster packs to a company called Industrial Inspection & Consulting, which specializes in CT scanning items for customers - saving you a decent chunk of the $100,000s it would cost to buy your own CT scanner. In one of the packs, they were luckily enough to discover the rarest Pokémon card in the set.
While it's hard to make out from the picture (I can never tell what I'm looking at when people show me their ultrasounds either) another image with an overlay makes it easier to see what appears to be the wing tip of the Charizard card.
Industrial Inspection & Consulting seems to X-ray all kinds of things, but began its card scanning service in 2024. While there was a bit of buzz surrounding it at the time, the practice doesn't exactly seem to have taken off.
It's not hard to guess why. While the idea of having a shadowless Charizard still sealed in the pack it was originally sold in has a certain novelty to it, the whole concept has some obvious practical problems. The main one is that to the untrained, not-X-ray-powered eye, a sealed pack containing a shadowless Charizard looks exactly the same as a sealed pack full of hot garbage.
From a potential buyer's point of view, you've only got the word of an internet stranger that the pack you've received is the same pack that was sent in to be scanned in the first place. To verify, you'd either have to ship it back to II&C (hey, it's a good way to ensure repeat business, I guess!) or rip it open, which would defeat the point of buying the card sealed in the first place.
That's why I'd be quite surprised if this item actually goes for the $30,000 asking price. For that much money, you could probably get a PSA 9 verified Charizard, and while you might expect a card still sealed in its pack to receive a perfect score at a card grader, that's not always the case.
But perhaps I'm too cynical. What do you think, would you CT scan a Pokemon pack? Let us know on our Discord. And don't miss our guide to the newest Pokémon set to stay up to date with the latest chase cards.