A better way to phrase it is people thought 1st Edition base was legendary. It was always the recess rumor you heard about but never saw.
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Ok so I got that info from a 2006 collectors guide I had as a kid
Either way we can agree to disagree but it just doesnāt make sense for a mass produced card to be so limited for such a popular product, even if itās 1st Edition. WOTC wanted to capitalize on the hype as much as possible so they wouldāve milked 1st Ed.
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I was around during that time and donāt remember charizard ex ever being more valuable. In fact I donāt think a charizard ex was graded until years later. Majority of the graded cards sold in the mid 2000s were base set. Charizard was definitely one of the more valuable copies, fetching a whopping $1,000 on a good day! 
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Very cool magazines for sure. Base 1st edition was the very 1st english print. There was no hype or anything when it was produced, hence its so scarce compared to later 1st edition prints of other sets.
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Well this collectors guide is from Beckett & doesnāt account for graded cards. But Charizard was really selling for $1000 in 2006? I know that was around the time the nostalgia hype started but from what I gathered prices skyrocketed towards the end of the 2000s.
Emphasis on a good day! A PSA 10 1st Ed Charizard was typically high hundreds during that time. Most sales I remember in that range were from 2007-09, which was ultimately the same market. Only a few people like @KingPokemon or ebirdman were really grading cards, so it was still pretty niche. Regardless, I could pick up FRLG and any ex pack in the store or online, where 1st Ed base was already more scarce.
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So youād lean closer to 10k of each 1st holo produced than 100k? Any rough guesses on what youād put the real number at?
The tcg was released to capitalize off the hype and success of the games though. 1st Ed Base came out only a few months after Red and Blue in english, by then the franchise was a heavy hitter in America.
I think this is the best approach to this. Comparing where mtg was at the time and kinda going off those numbers. Like you said even conservatively. Itās still around 100k charizards alone
No one knows for sure but 100k feels like a lot.
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Letās say that Base 1st Ed was 1/10th the print size of Urzaās Legacy. Thatās still 34,000 Charizards. A print size of 10,000 of each holo would be less than 3% (<1/33rd) of the Urzaās Legacy print size. Thereās just no wayā¦
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I recall reading some information direct from a wotc employee about early print numbers of 1st Ed base, the numbers he provided pointed to 10k print run for each holo
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Hereās an article suggesting 400k packs were sold in the first 6 weeks. It doesnāt mention anything about those being 1st or unlimited, but Iād guess 1st edition didnāt last longer than a month at most.
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Exactly. The comparison to mtg is honestly I think the best data we can go off of.
Speaking as someone who lives in the Europe, I most definitely do have 1st ed holos just lying around ungradedā¦ (fairly mint)
Iām 100% sure Iām not the only one
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Of course there are, but the chance that somebody from Europe finds it childhood collection and it is stacked with english 1st edition base holos is close to zero.
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Iām sure we can safely say thousands of copies were damaged, thrown out, etc over the years. Children mostly enjoy these cards in a different way to us as adults, I remember seeing people with elastic bands around their collections just chucked raw in their pockets, it is what it is and is also a big reason theyāre coveted in beautiful condition.
Contrast to modern, Iām not really that sure modern quality control is much better but itās certainly printed in a lot higher volumes and where we see the majority of stuff comes out at high grades because as soon as its pulled it goes in a sleeve/semi rigid and goes to psa, bgs, cgc.
If wotc stuff didnāt have 20+ years of movement and mistreatment on the physical product (bbs, booster packs) weād probably be seeing more stuff emerge in 9s, 10s like we see with full arts now.
As it happens this just popped up on my feed https://youtu.be/usxAVnlGrPA
How many collections exist forgotten in cupboards, ruined in attics, buried in basements?
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I feel that is more common than people realize. There is definitely stuff just sitting around that is forgotten about
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Yeah, from everything Iāve read the release range of 1st Ed Base Set in particular was much different. On the English side, Iāve read it was only released mainly on the West coast where WOTC was located and also some in New York and a couple other major cities. In addition, it was sold out basically on the first day either by stores who managed to get it or by other individuals. Then of course youāll read and hear stories about how even people like Gary had to travel long distances or go to special conventions to even find sealed boxes back in 1999.
In addition, the other history to understand is the approach WOTC took with distribution. They greatly tightened up print runs for anything they produced after MTG Fallen Empires was a huge financial lost due to being massively overprinted. I read that they werenāt sure initially how well the Pokemon TCG was going to sell and so they didnāt produce nearly as much 1st Ed Base Set as later 1st Ed sets. If we read this old article from February 1999 with WOTC, it clearly states that Pokemon product sold ā10x above initial projectionsā: https://web.archive.org/web/20090104212044/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_1999_Feb_3/ai_53696127
This tells me that they werenāt planning to create a lot of the 1st Ed Base Set early on and quickly ramped up production of Unlimited to meet the crazy demand and popularity of the TCG back then.
So anyway, this doesnāt āproveā anything regarding print runs or numbers, but it leads me to believe that thereās not nearly as much 1st Ed Base Set out there as most other WOTC Pokemon sets. Thereās probably more than 10K of each card for sure, but I doubt the numbers are that massive either compared to other sets and especially Unlimited.
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I never knew it had such limited release. Thatās honestly pretty cool. You really think it only lasted a day on shelves?
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