Tell me something I don’t know about Base Set and early WotC

I am writing a book on early WotC cards and it is proving to be a mammoth task. I’ve interviewed ex-WotC employees which has been amazing. I want this to be the most comprehensive book on early Pokemon cards ever released. There is so much to write about and research and every day I stumble across something new. With your help, this book could be taken to the next level, so tell me some obscure facts that I may not know, or might have overlooked.

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A cool revelation dug up by some sleuths on this forum revealed that the 1st Edition promo Pikachu (“Ivy Pikachu”) that was rarely found in 1st Edition Jungle packs was not an error but rather a true, intentional secret rare based on an old Japanese magazine scan (or something like that lol).

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To be fair, this is more of a theory, but one that everyone likes. There is no “confirmed” proof.

I don’t know how detailed you got with your information, but the 1st edition base set had two stamp variations. The hobby calls them thick and thin stamps. Thick stamps tend to be more rare for holo cards, appearing on only about 25%, but all non holo cards are thick for the most part.

Original booster boxes for 1st edition base had clear wrap and all boxes after base set have wizard logos on them.

One of the most sought after and early error cards is the no damage ninetales, which is missing the 80 damage number on it’s card. It was found in the brushfire theme deck.

Another stamp variation is gray stamps for 1st ed base set. Many cards were printed with a light “gray” stamp possibly due to less ink being used while printing.

Most pokemon cards from the early WOTC hobby have some PSA 10 or BGS 10 copies, but Prerelease Jungle clefable has never been graded PSA 10. PSA 9 is the highest graded copy to this day because of how the card was cut during the printing process.

That’s enough random facts for now… lol

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Knew all of this thanks :grin:. Aside from the PSA population data. I’m going to do a whole section on that but last time I checked I didn’t fully understand their tables as they had three rows in the table. I had no idea what two of them meant. The other info is all stuff I’m very aware of. I’m looking for the less well known info

I did vaguely remember reading something about this. Thanks for reminding me. I will re-look into that

Not a secret but foreign cards get overlooked eventhough they’re still under wizards copyright. They all had 1ed and unl base set versions and the Spanish sets had some copyright date changes due to being released in Spain and Latin America at different times.
The Korean and Chinese sets had the wizards copyright too despite being geographically near Japan. I assume that means wizards still printed them but I’m not sure how distribution worked.

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The 1st edition promo Pikas were purposefully given out to winners of the early WotC illustration contests. I interviewed a winner here:

pokumon.com/article/wizards-illustration-contests/

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More info about 1st edition stamps can be found here: www.elitefourum.com/t/1st-edition-stamp-variations-lets-iron-it-out/17624/1

@basesetwill This thread might be useful for all WotC era repeating misprints and Sample cards: www.elitefourum.com/t/masters-guide-for-pokemon-wotc-corrected-errors-test-cards/29328/1

Greetz,
Quuador

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It would probably be much more helpful to you and this thread if you produced a list of your known facts. This would allow verification of those facts & to produce new facts that you don’t already have.

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Not many people know this but all of the Machamps are 1st Edition

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The Trainer Deck A Machamp is both unlimited and non-holofoil.

Not sure if you’ve seen this but the ones pulled from packs appear to always appear in threes: www.elitefourum.com/t/9x-1st-ed-ivy-jungle-promo-pikachu-pulled-nuts/32905/1. The same guy did another stream a while later where they pulled 6 more of them from 2 packs, giving them 15 in total from 5 packs. I guess if this was a mistake they accidentally used these full Pikachu sheets instead of the uncommon (IIRC) Jungle cards.

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I assume this was a joke? :joy: if not then yes I had realised that

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I have written about that trainer deck a Machamp. Such a cool card. As for the info about the pikachus - no I didn’t know that. That’s great info thanks

It would take me ages to type up everything I knew :joy: also that’s kinda the point of the book in a way. I want that to be the place where i have written everything I know

That misprint thread looks super useful thanks

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There was a rumor that those packs from that stream were resealed, the person streaming was trying to sell those pikas from the stream as pack fresh but they had quite a bit of whitening making them on average excellent to near mint copies.

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You can’t leave out the part of the book where Logan Paul brings a pornstar to king pokemon’s house to acquire what would be the 3rd 1st edition BGS 10 charizard.

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I watched the video that king put out on the sale of the card. I didn’t even look at who Logan brought with him. Geez that guy :roll_eyes:. But yeah kinda unavoidable to mention him somewhere in the book given recent events

While there are WotC prerelease cards (like Aerodactyl/Clefable) there were no real prereleases like we have since 2003.

As Logan respectfully asks Gary to part with a charizard, I looked behind him, and was like wait? What website am I on? Who’s that on that couch? Wait until frosted caribou catches wind of this.

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