1999 Pokemon Base Set 1st Edition Venusaur #15 Holo PSA 10

One of three faces on the wrapper

The Pokemon Trading Card Game began in Japan, where Creatures Inc. developed it and Media Factory published the first set on October 20, 1996. Wizards of the Coast, a game company based in Renton, Washington, brought it to the United States on January 9, 1999. The English Base Set has 102 cards: 69 Pokemon, 16 of them holofoil, plus 33 Trainer and Energy cards.

Venusaur is card #15, the last of the 16 holos. It belongs to the trio that defined the set from the outside: the English booster packs came in three wrapper designs, each showing Venusaur, Charizard or Blastoise, the fully evolved forms of the three starter Pokemon from the original Game Boy games.

The English set went through four print runs. The first, 1st Edition, carries a small black '1st Edition' stamp on the left below the art box, thinner HP and attack text and no drop shadow around the illustration. The second, called Shadowless, is identical but without the stamp. The third, Unlimited, added the drop shadow and thicker text, and a fourth Unlimited run changed the copyright line to 1999-2000. Collectors value them in that order, first to last.

No one has published how many 1st Edition cards were printed. A 2016 PSA article quoted an estimate of fewer than 10,000 of each card and noted that the 1st Edition cards were sold only in 11-card booster packs, each with seven commons, three uncommons and one rare, with a holo in roughly one pack of every three.

Mitsuhiro Arita's flower

The art is by Mitsuhiro Arita, one of four illustrators on the Base Set alongside Ken Sugimori, Keiji Kinebuchi and Tomoaki Imakuni. Arita drew Charizard and Gyarados in the same holo run, and in Japan his artwork also appeared on the booster packs themselves.

On the card Venusaur is a 100 HP Stage 2 Grass Pokemon with the Pokemon Power Energy Trans, which let a player move Grass Energy cards between their Pokemon as often as they liked during a turn, and a single attack, Solarbeam, costing four Grass Energy for 60 damage. The Pokedex text, adapted from the Red and Blue games, describes a plant that blooms when it absorbs solar energy.

Venusaur had a quirky start in Japan. Early copies of the Japanese Expansion Pack, printed without rarity symbols, listed Venusaur as Pokemon #68 instead of #3, an error fixed in later runs. In 1998 Media Factory ran a 'Trade Please' mail-in campaign from February 10 to July 31 in which fans could send in any two cards and choose a course: Charizard, Blastoise, or a Venusaur with new artwork by Ken Sugimori.

Pokemania arrives

The cards landed in the middle of a media wave. The anime premiered in Japan on April 1, 1997, and the English version began airing in U.S. syndication on September 8, 1998, twenty days before Pokemon Red and Blue reached North American stores. Kids' WB picked up the show as a Saturday morning cartoon in February 1999, weeks after the cards went on sale.

The craze burned fast. Base Set cards were treated as valuable collector's items in 1999, then crashed about a year later; a New York Times writer compared the collapse to the dot-com bubble, and Wizards of the Coast laid off 100 employees. Early on, a Charizard could sell online for upwards of $375; after the crash, around $100.

Venusaur lived in Charizard's shadow from the beginning. In PSA's 2016 look at the 1st Edition set, collectors ranked Charizard first and Blastoise second, with Venusaur the third-most coveted holo, popular because of its place in the Red and Blue games.

From third place to a record

The modern market for 1st Edition Base Set cards took off in the 2020s, and Wikipedia credits YouTuber Logan Paul with part of the surge for buying and opening Base Set boxes on live stream. A complete set of 1st Edition Base Set cards, all graded PSA 10, had sold for $107,010 at auction in 2019; an unopened 1st Edition box brought $408,000 in 2022.

PSA's own auction log shows how the Venusaur in Gem Mint traded before the latest jump. PSA 10 copies sold for $12,600 on February 24, 2025, and $12,877 on March 17, 2025, while PSA 9 copies traded between about $2,600 and $5,400 through 2025.

On February 16, 2026, a PSA 10 copy described as coming from a Logan Paul box break sold at auction for $75,640, reported as a record for the card. That sale was nearly six times the PSA 10 prices of a year earlier. The same day a 1st Edition Blastoise in PSA 10, also from a Logan Paul break, brought $138,880, so the two starters traveled together.

How to identify it

The card should read 15/102 at the lower right, with the black '1st Edition' stamp at the left edge just below the art window and no drop shadow along the right and bottom of the illustration frame. Holo 1st Edition cards come with a thin or thick numeral '1' in the stamp; PSA groups both under the same 1st Edition listing.

A Shadowless copy looks the same without the stamp, and an Unlimited copy adds the drop shadow and heavier text. Later reprints exist in Base Set 2, Legendary Collection, the 25th anniversary Celebrations Classic Collection (with an anniversary logo in the artwork) and the Pokemon Trading Card Game Classic box, none of which carry the 1999 1st Edition stamp.

PSA's census lists 145 PSA 10s out of roughly 3,850 copies graded as of October 2026, with 727 at PSA 9 and 621 at PSA 8. Collectors say the main obstacles to a 10 are scratches on the holo surface and whitening or chipping along the blue borders on the back.

The numbers

Set

Pokemon Base Set (English), 102 cards: 69 Pokemon (16 holo rares), 33 Trainer and Energy

Card

#15 of 102, holofoil rare; Stage 2 Grass, 100 HP; Energy Trans power; Solarbeam, 60 damage

Print run

1st Edition, first of four English runs; size never disclosed (a 2016 estimate: under 10,000 per card)

PSA 10 population

145 (PSA census as fetched October 2026)

PSA 9 population

727 (same census)

PSA 8 population

621 (same census)

Total graded by PSA

About 3,850 (same census)

Timeline

1. Oct 20, 1996

   The Base Set is released in Japan by Media Factory, with Venusaur among the holos.

2. Feb 10, 1998

   Japan's 'Trade Please' mail-in campaign begins, offering a Venusaur with new Ken Sugimori art as one of three choices; it runs to July 31.

3. Jan 9, 1999

   Wizards of the Coast releases the English Base Set; the first run carries the 1st Edition stamp.

4. 2000

   The Pokemon card market crashes about a year after the U.S. launch; Wizards of the Coast lays off 100 employees.

5. 2016

   A PSA article ranks Venusaur the third-most coveted 1st Edition holo, with 66 PSA 10s graded.

6. 2019

   A complete 1st Edition Base Set in PSA 10 sells for $107,010 at auction.

7. Feb 24, 2025

   A PSA 10 1st Edition Venusaur sells for $12,600 at auction.

8. Mar 17, 2025

   Another PSA 10 sells for $12,877.

9. Feb 16, 2026

   A PSA 10 copy from a Logan Paul box break sells for $75,640 at auction, reported as a record for the card.

10. Oct 2026

    PSA's census shows 145 PSA 10s of the 1st Edition Venusaur.

The world in 1997

• Apr 1, 1997

  The Pokemon anime premieres on TV Tokyo.

• Sep 8, 1998

  The English Pokemon anime debuts in U.S. syndication, twenty days before Pokemon Red and Blue reach North America.

• Feb 1999

  Kids' WB begins airing Pokemon as a Saturday morning cartoon.

• Feb 12, 1999

  President Bill Clinton is acquitted by the Senate in his impeachment trial.

• Mar 29, 1999

  The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above 10,000 for the first time.

• Mar 31, 1999

  The Matrix is released in theaters.

• Jul 10, 1999

  Brandi Chastain's penalty kick wins the Women's World Cup for the United States.

• Dec 7, 1999

  The recording industry sues Napster for copyright infringement.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, 1999 Pokemon Base Set 1st Edition Venusaur #15 Holo PSA 10 is number 25 of 100 in the trading cards entries of the FLOAT 100. 97 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (77 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• The Venusaur shares an artist, Mitsuhiro Arita, with the Base Set Charizard.
• Venusaur was one of three Pokemon on the English Base Set booster wrappers, alongside Charizard and Blastoise.
• Early Japanese printings misnumbered Venusaur as Pokemon #68 instead of #3.
• PSA counted 66 PSA 10 copies in 2016; by October 2026 there were 145.
• The Game Boy video game version of the card game calls Venusaur's power 'Energy Transfer' in one deck description instead of 'Energy Trans.'