Why is this card so elusive in comparison to other error cards ?
ive had my eyes stuck to ebay for several years now and never seen one pop up that isnt either already psa graded or ungraded and over priced. I thought the “no stage” blastoise was meant to be harder to achieve than wartortle but i have 4 of him now and not even a peek of wartortle.
Am i missing something ?
There’s a few things I can address here, but some things I’m going to have to assume that might not be true in your particular case.
Anyone that definitively says one is rarer than the other simply doesn’t know, it’s impossible to determine as neither has a direct number associated to how many exist. The entire Portuguese print had the error for wartortle so if you count those that’s the only way I would believe anyone in saying one is rarer than the other. If I had to guess I’d say the English Wartortle error is rarer than the No Stage Blastoise. As far as value goes the Blastoise error is more valuable, value doesn’t correlate with rarity as has been discussed many times in the forum despite people not understanding.
I’m also not sure on what you expect to pay for these cards but you said they’re overpriced, I might argue that you’re undervaluing them. If you can find a NM-MT version you’d be incredibly lucky. Wartortles were packed on the back of the packs and often times come out the the packs damaged to PSA 8 standard. Therefore it’s very likely that a PSA 8 is actually a pack fresh card. Many people automatically dismiss PSA 8 cards without knowing why they achieve the grades they get. Which goes back to my statement of you might be undervaluing the card.
Finally Wartortle isn’t exactly a card people in the casual pokemon ‘collector’ would think of looking at if they were selling, if you have a blastoise you’re likely to sell/hold onto it up as it was a big three in the hobby since the beginning you might think there’s value even if you don’t know. If you have a wartortle you’d probably view it as another card that’s taking up space and not worth your time selling so it goes into the trash.
I would say the English Wartortle appears less frequently than the no stage blastoise. There is no way to verify the actual release numbers, but in my experience I see more of the Blastoise.
Also, @cullers really laid everything out for these two cards.
It would be cool if there were a squirtle error, to complete the entire evolutions line!
Thanks for the insight bud, yeh all really good points. I dont want to think of how many may of been thrown away lol.
Think i remember reading up on it on bulbapedia a long time back when comparing the blastoise error to wartortle.
Yeh ive seen the Portuguese one come up several times but it doesnt take my fancy. Just noticed a psa 9 sold for only £70 a few weeks back, cant argue with that price. 
Ill just have to keep an eye on the market, give it 5 more years and i might get lucky.
I think the Wartortle is harder to find anyway. It’s an uncommon. I remember trashing my own old commons and uncommons after I sold all holofoils when I moved from Pokemon to Dragon Ball in early 2000’s. And I am quiet sure that in my big stack there were 1st Edition and even Shadowless base cards. But nothing had/seemed to have value at that time because everybody got out of Pokemon and value of cards dropped, especially Base Set with Neo Genesis (Gold Silver era) being the hot thing.
I think of all people that collected/played Pokemon and kept cards for nostalgia have their holofoils in a box or binder in the attic. Commons and uncommons, no idea.
Also… Wartortle being 1st stage of one of the three starters being mostlikely a ‘rare’ uncommon. One with a lesser print rate. It’s something Rudy from Alpha Investments mentioned a few weeks ago. It’s typical WotC behaviour to print certain commons in a lesser quantity than others, same for uncommons. It’s quiet possible Wartortle was labeled as an U2 not an U1, having a lesser print quantity.
All this combined, I would assume Wartortle is harder to find, but unless some WotC employee comes out of his cave tomorrow and drops a spreadsheet showing exact printer numbers of each card; you never know.