Symbol shadow troubles

Question

I've come across a very particular difficulty, spent the last hour trying to nail it down repeatably. The problem is this: I have a jpg image that I use multiple times in an illustrator file, and I wanted to be more efficient by making it into a symbol. So I embedded the image, made it a symbol, then updated my Illustrator file, replacing the instances of that image with the symbol-version of the image. I then tried to add a drop shadow effect to one of those symbols. Although the effect was listed on the appearance menu, it didn't actually show up visibly on the screen. However, if I added a non-shadow effect to the symbol (e.g. blur .1 pixel) then added a drop shadow, the shadow would then appear. Oddly, I have other images that I have made into symbols where this problem does not occur. Perhaps it's some weird image format issue?
I've included a jpg export below, showing the problem. I've also put the original .ai file up on my Google docs folder here:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0Hoxcl5zTEtNmZnYW9qaWpkVVU/edit?usp=sharing
I'm using Illustrator CS6 trial version (16.0.3 64 bit). on a Win 8-64 laptop.
Any comments/help would be greatly appreciated.
Yes, I'll probably buy the real version of Illustrator very soon. I need something better than Inkscape, but I'm a little hesitant, put off by all the oddities I've discovered in the past couple weeks. I'd hoped that a for-profit package would be more reliable than this.

Answer 1

@ CHM Prepress & MikeWenzloff
I hadn't known you could edit a symbol definition, so thanks for pointing that out. While that method does create a shadow, it's a static shadow. Meaning that if you put a shadow into the symbol definition, and that shadow is below/right of the image relative to the original orientation of that image, then it will always be below/right of the image (relative to original image orientation) regardless of the ultimate orientation of the symbol. In other words, the shadow is stuck to the image, such that when you rotate the image/shadow symbol combo, the shadow rotates with the image.
In my particular application, I'm creating a sample layout of cards for a rule book, and the cards will be in various orientations. I'd like all the shadows to be below/right from the perspective of the viewer, to hint at the presence of a light that is above/left of the physical page. But if I add the shadow to the symbol definition, then this won't be true.
So it's a good solution, but in my particular situation, it's going to be better to use Monica's offset path solution, so that I get more dynamic shadows.
Thanks to you all for the ideas and the discussion. It was both super helpful, and super speedy.