The Charizard Buying Guide | Part 1

While Pikachu may be the mascot of Pokémon as a whole, Charizard is most certainly the poster boy for the trading card game. Over the course of the games nearly 30 year history Charizard has always been the most expensive or coveted card from the set it appeared in.
It all stems back from the very first set, the Base Set, originally printed in English in 1999 - the big red lizard had the most hit points (HP) at 120, making it the toughest Pocket Monster to take down, the highest damaging attack (Fire Spin for a whopping 100 damage) making it the hardest hitting Pokémon without a drawback (we’re looking at you Chansey with your Double-Edge attack) and had the best resistance, it resisted fighting types by 30 damage, it also has an alluring and unique Pokémon Power which essentially meant any deck could run a Charizard, if you had one.

In this buying guide, we’ll review each Charizard from the ‘vintage Wizard of the Coast’ era, looking at what makes them special and the rough market price. We’ll start with the Base Set and its many variants.

Charizard – Base Set – 1999

The first time Charizard was ever printed in an English trading card set. As mentioned in the introduction, on paper, every kid in the playground considered this the strongest card in the game. Ironically, this incarnation of Charizard never became a competitive tournament-winning card, but the casual appeal and its sheer awesomeness in the anime cemented Charizard as a must-have fan favourite.

 
The Base Set was made up of 102 cards, with 36 booster packs (each containing 11 cards) to a single sealed booster box. If you opened an entire box to yourself you would roughly open 12 random holographic cards but you could open multiples of the same one.
Not every holographic card was made equal, with some Gyarados and Hitmonchan appearing in theme decks, this meant you could open two boxes to yourself and still not pull a Charizard – and the main point is – back in the day the demand far outweighed the supply, so who could get their hands on multiple boxes let alone multiple packs!

As of 2024, a near-mint Unlimited Charizard is roughly £250-£300, but the subjectiveness of card grading has caused some near-mint copies to shoot past that price. For the moment, we’re focusing on the Unlimited copy simply because it’s the copy that we most likely had or saw as kids, but we will cover the Base Set variants later on.

Graded copies differ in grade and condition, but a rough price breakdown is as follows:
PSA 7 - £280-£320
PSA 8 - £420-£460
PSA 9 - £900-£1000
PSA 10 £5000-£6000

First Edition Shadowless

The Original Base Set went through a number of variations and printings through 1999 and not all of them are widely known.

The first iteration is known as 1^st Edition Shadowless. This variation is distinct from the others on two grounds: 1) The 1st edition circular stamp on the left-hand side of the card is clearly visible, and 2) A shadowless card has a different colour pallet than its unlimited counterpart. The official terminology is what’s known as missing the ‘drop shadow’ on the card, specifically around the art box but the best way to describe it is it kind of looks like the entire card is sun damaged/bleach.

This is the hardest printing to come by and the true ‘1^st edition’ wave of the Base Set, with PSA 10 copies commanding the highest price at auction. In the last 18 months, only a few have come to market via professional auction houses, with a rough price breakdown of $162,000 - $220,000 depending on the platform and time of year.

'Shadowless' 

The next variation is simply referred to as ‘Shadowless’; this is exactly the same as what we just discussed; however, it doesn’t have the 1st edition circular stamp on the left-hand side of the card. This print run directly followed the 1^st edition print run and, in turn, was followed by the Unlimited print run that was readily available worldwide. 1^st Edition Shadowless and Non-1^st Edition Shadowless were primarily found in the United States; in fact, 1st Edition was only released in America, with very few ‘Shadowless’ packs being sent to Europe.

Price data on Shadowless cards is the hardest to come by, some collectors forgo this print run, instead opting to pay more for the 1^st edition wave or much less on the regular Unlimited print run. Some up-to-date prices are:
PSA 7 Shadowless Charizard £1000-£1200
PSA 8 Shadowless Charizard £1800-£2200
PSA 9 Shadowless Charizard £3600-£4200
PSA 10 Shadowless Charizard – The last sold listing was May 2024 and it went for just over £40,000!

‘4^th Print AKA UK 1999-2000’

The final print run of Base Set was commissioned by the then Managing Director of Wizards of the Coast UK, Stephen Wilks, the demand for Base Set was still through the roof during the first quarter of the year 2000 and this wave was printed in the UK and primarily sold in the UK, France and Germany. 4^th print has a very distinctive telltale sign; it looks exactly the same as a regular Unlimited card. however, at the bottom of the card where the copyright date can be found, you’ll see it has the date ‘1999-2000’. Base Set, Jungle and Fossil (the second and third expansions) were printed in 1999 and subsequent sets all feature the year they were printed in at the bottom of the card, as Base Set was originally printed in 1999. If you see the 1999-2000 date it means it was part of the final print run.

As this print run was made and primarily sold in the UK, it is especially rare in the States, with collectors often paying way more than their collecting cousins across the Atlantic.
Keep a look out for any 4^th print Base Set card, they all go for way more than the regular Unlimited edition simply because the print run was incredibly low, graded copies are just as scares, with most collectors getting any holographic graded.
In November 2024 a PSA 7 4^th print Charizard sold on eBay for £600, nearly double that of an Unlimited PSA 7 Charizard. There are also sold results of a PSA 5 selling for £320 in October of 2024. As of November 2024 PSA have only graded just six 4^th print Charizard’s in a perfect grade 10, and only 45 in a grade 9, compare this to the 7,929 PSA 9 Unlimited Charizards that have been graded, and you can easily see just how rare the 4^th print 1999-2000 UK print is!

Join us for part 2, where we’ll examine the fan favourite Team Rocket set and the first of many Base Set Charizard reprints!

If you are interested in buying a base set Charizard, check out our monthly trading card auctions.