The answer is obviously Team Rocket’s Meowth from the Wizards Black Star promo set.
I’m working on digitising my old Shared Artwork collection at the moment, and this was one of the cards I found that I’d missed back in 2018.
In my opinion this card has the strongest connection to the early anime.
If you have no idea what I’m talking about, take a closer look at the artwork…
Not only is this the talking Meowth that accompanies Jessie and James, the silhouettes are all of Pokémon which feature heavily in the first 90 or so episodes of the anime:
Going anticlockwise, I believe we have the following Pokémon here:
- Ash’s Bulbasaur
- Brock’s Vulpix
- Koga’s Golbat
- Ash’s Lapras
- Jigglypuff (possibly Misty’s Togepi?)
- Misty’s Starmie (possibly Misty’s Staryu?)
- Ash’s Pikachu
- Ash’s Charizard
- Brock’s Geodude
- Ash’s Butterfree
I think looking at market value this card is a great indicator of how often people skip over card artwork without paying attention to what’s going on in the background. You can have your 4-figure Bulbasaur, 5-figure Pikachu and 6-figure Charizard, I’m more than happy with this 2-figure Meowth.