What do you remember about 1999-2000? Does anyone by chance recall if UK started seeing jungle packs before base? Was it pretty much at the same time? Ik its a 25yo question but figured someone may have a core memory somewhere.
From what I remember, we didn’t have access to Jungle right away. For a while everyone in the playground was trading unlimited Base Set cards because that was the only set available at the time. Not long after, Jungle came out, followed by Fossil, Base 2, Team Rocket, and so on.
Thinking back, 1st Edition packs were either very rare or basically non-existent. Most, if not all of the stock around us was unlimited. I’m not even sure we were aware of 1st Editions back then, or at least no one seemed to place any extra value on them.
I was 11 at the time. In my school, we had Base Unltd for a few months at the start, and this was pretty much all anyone had.
Then people got hold of Jungle and Fossil and that was really exciting to have new cards.
We had no idea about 1st edition.
It sounds like things rolled out as planned then. Im chasing a jungle print run and it happens to be out there. Tough to find stateside tho
What’s the indicator for the print run you’re looking for? Jungle didn’t have a 1999-2000 version like base did it?
Where I grew up Base unlimited definitely came first. UK sadly never got access to 1st ed base, but I remember seeing pictures of 1st/shadowless holos in magazines which made me wonder why my cards didn’t look as ‘nice’. Jungle was plentiful, but I think fossil was more popular and I don’t remember seeing as much of fossil available. The only set I definitely remember buying first edition packs of was Team Rocket, and I think they were only available because it was the least popular of the original sets at the time. Still dislike that set today because it serves as a reminder that it was often the only thing available when you went into the shop looking for base/jungle/fossil.
I remember seeing base 2 and, to a lesser extent, legendary collection, available a the shop tills for quite some time after the initial hype died down. Neo sets were available (I vaguely remember seeing first ed packs) but less so in mainstream shops like Woolworths and more so in independent LGS’s / Forbidden planets. I barely remember e-series packs at the tills, probably because of much smaller product runs combined with me being not as interested in collecting by that point.
Onto Nintendo-era, and you basically had the pick of the bunch, because by 2003/4 the hype had largely died. Argos used to do £8.99 for 3 packs of R/S & ex Dragon, and my mum would occasionally come home with some packs for me if I’d done well at school or some shit. I also remember seeing plenty of the later Nintendo sets around in shops, particularly because I used to get the cashiers to give me the box topper cards that they’d display with the open booster boxes at the register. One holiday in Truro I literally had a pocket full of the Hidden Legends Groudon box topper holos after going from shop-to-shop buying 1 pack and asking if I could have the card too (the trick at the time was to point at the card and say “excuse me miss, do you know if that card comes in the set?”) and most of the time they’d just say something like “don’t know, would you like it?”. Hah, I was such a manipulative little asshole.
Jungle had several, people just dont know how to see past the copyrights. The front plates of the cards im looking for have a +15°magenta angle while the backs they were printed on have a -15° magenta angle. The yellow inks have a sort of bronze reaction on the back under the UV. Pretty sure its a USA printing but finding it more in UK so we are thinking most of that print run went to UK.
I’ll crack out the microscope later 