So, with a black light in hand, I thought I would see the scarcity of these cards. To begin, I have a decent sample size in that I now have 7 (minus 1 card - explained later) complete sets (1 being still a factory set though opened) and about another 8000 in my duplicates boxes for trade. For each and every card I have a minimum of 6 cards and as many as 30 cards. This does not count the Dark Logo VAR parallel which I may go through today as they also exist in glow back and regular back.
Neither version are rare. I now have a complete set of regular back and a complete set of glow back. If anything, the regular back is rarer than the glow back. For many cards, I only have 1 regular back while having 10 or more glow back. 2 cards I actually had to dig into the factory set (last resort) to find the regular back so of those, I defintiely only have the one regular back. Only one card did I have to also find in the factory set to find the glow back; I did not have more than 10 of that particular card.
Factory sets are not one version or another. They are a mix of both regular and glow back. My particular set has more glow backs than regular back.
I used to have only 6 complete sets and when I went looking for a #629 card to add to the set I was building, I did not find any in my duplicates. That is when I remembered that it was the last card I acquired for the last set I completed (I believe from a trade here on TCDB) and realized I was now again missing that card to complete another set. Why do I want 7 sets? Because I hate things that are "almost but never complete". So now I have it on my Want List; if one of my regular trade partners has it for trade, I would be happy to have it included in our next trade. It does not have to be regular or glow back as it is going into a set that is a mix. No worries about completing an 8 set as there is another card where I had only 1 duplicate which is now in the 7th incomplete set.
My recommendation is that this VAR parallel not be added to this site's database. Unless someone has a black light, he would not know if he owns one version or another. This would really complicate potential trades (and could cause some disagreements) as a trader may not know which version he actually has while the person in need may want one particular version. If someone is looking to complete on eof these parallel sets, I can definitely help on at least 80% of the cards, more so on the glow backs than the regular issue.
Bruno
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Check my Profile page to see my 2023 Goals and my Lists of sets near completion (5 cards or less) or sets getting close (less than 100 cards missing and 75% complete).
https://www.tcdb.com/Forum.cfm/Page/B/ID/0/?MODE=VIEW&ThreadID=25745&C=0