Reddy

If you’re looking to collect English Pokémon Base Set cards, make sure you know your stuff There are four obviously distinct print runs of the set. Some are much more expensive or rare than others, so pay attention The first is First Edition Base Set In picture one, you can see the defining features that each first edition base set card should have circled in white This includes the first edition stamp, the shadowless frame (not observable for trainer cards), and the “99” copyright date. The second is Shadowless Base Set Shadowless Base Set is technically an error of sorts. When the set was first produced it was supposed to be the first run of unlimited Base Set cards, but WOTC forgot the shadow, so it looks distinct from the unlimited runs still You can see in picture two, Shadowless Base Set still has the shadowless frame and the “99” copyright date. It’s simply missing the first edition stamp, circled in blue It’s important to note, for Shadowless, the only way to distinguish trainer cards and energies is the copyright date. So make sure to double check next time you’re flipping through bulk at your local card shop! The third is the Unlimited printing of Base Set Easily the most common, there were a lot of these cards printed compared to its counterparts In picture 3, you can see that now these cards have the shadowed frame, the “99” copyright date is gone, and of course there is still no first edition stamp, again all circled in blue Finally, the fourth print run is commonly just referred to as the fourth print run of Base Set In picture 4, you can see the only distinguishable identifier for this print run is the “1999-2000” copyright date in the bottom right. Otherwise, the cards look exactly like the unlimited runs The fourth print run of Base Set is more rare, but not highly sought after from collectors. EXCEPT for the holos See, the holo rare cards from the fourth print run were produced at much lower rates compared to the non-holo cards. And for this reason, they’re quite rare and expensive! Hopefully you learned something new, or simply enjoyed reading this. Here’s to your Pokémon collection and knowledge growing!