The Base Set 2 booster box is the odd one out in the vintage family: a box full of cards everyone already knew, in packaging nobody had seen before. In 2000, Wizards of the Coast bundled the best of Base Set and Jungle into a 130-card set made specifically for the English market. In this blog you will read when the box came out, why there is no first edition of it, what exactly is inside, which cards you can pull and how the price has developed since.

When did the Base Set 2 booster box come out?

Base Set 2 was released on 24 February 2000 by Wizards of the Coast. It was the fourth English expansion, after Base Set, Jungle and Fossil, and at the same time the first one made up entirely of reprints: 130 cards from Base Set and Jungle mixed together.

There was a practical reason behind that. By early 2000, Base Set and Jungle were barely on the shelves anymore, while new players kept coming in every week who needed a Charizard or simply a stack of energy cards. Base Set 2 brought all that material back in one go. The set has no Japanese counterpart either: it was put together specifically for the English market and only exists there.

Why is there no 1st Edition of Base Set 2?

With Base Set, Jungle and Fossil, the first question about a sealed box is always which print run is inside. With Base Set 2 that question does not come up: the set was printed as Unlimited only. There was never a run with the round 1st Edition stamp, and a shadowless in-between variant like the one Base Set has does not exist here either. Every sealed Base Set 2 box you come across is therefore the same version.

If a box is still being offered as "1st Edition Base Set 2", that description is simply wrong. That is an immediate reason to look at the rest of the listing more critically.

What is in the Base Set 2 booster box?

• 36 booster packs of Base Set 2
• 11 cards per pack, 396 cards in total
• One rare per pack, which can be holo or non-holo
• Four different pack artworks: Pidgeot, Raichu, Gyarados and Mewtwo

There is nothing else in there. No promo card, no sleeves, no dice: this is a box of packs and nothing more. Those four pack artworks are a detail collectors pay attention to, by the way, because Base Set, Jungle and Fossil all had just three. So if you want a complete set of wrappers, Base Set 2 takes one extra pack.

Which cards can you pull?

Base Set 2 has 130 cards, of which 20 are Holo Rares. Those are numbers 1 through 20, and they run in alphabetical order: Alakazam (1/130), Blastoise (2/130), Chansey (3/130), Charizard (4/130), Clefable (5/130), Clefairy (6/130), Gyarados (7/130), Hitmonchan (8/130), Magneton (9/130), Mewtwo (10/130), Nidoking (11/130), Nidoqueen (12/130), Ninetales (13/130), Pidgeot (14/130), Poliwrath (15/130), Raichu (16/130), Scyther (17/130), Venusaur (18/130), Wigglytuff (19/130) and Zapdos (20/130).

That list shows straight away how the set is put together. Fifteen of the twenty come from Base Set: Alakazam, Blastoise, Chansey, Charizard, Clefairy, Gyarados, Hitmonchan, Magneton, Mewtwo, Nidoking, Ninetales, Poliwrath, Raichu, Venusaur and Zapdos. The other five come from Jungle: Clefable, Nidoqueen, Pidgeot, Scyther and Wigglytuff, cards you could previously only pull from the Jungle booster box.

One card was deliberately left out: Machamp. Back in 1999 it was never in a booster pack, because the entire run went into the 2-Player Starter Set, and it did not return in Base Set 2 either. So anyone collecting their vintage holos out of boxes is still one Machamp short.

Besides the holos, the set consists of 20 regular Rares, 42 uncommons and 48 commons. What you pull out of a box differs from box to box. There is no reliable pack test from this period with enough boosters opened, so hard percentages on how often you hit a holo simply do not exist for this set. Which of those twenty holos are worth the most, with the raw and PSA 10 value of each card, we list in the Chase Cards from Base Set 2.

Why do these holos shine differently?

Base Set 2 was the first English set with Cosmos holofoil, the star pattern that stayed the standard for years afterwards. Base Set, Jungle and Fossil still used the older foil with the large light beams. The same Charizard artwork therefore looks different in Base Set 2 than it does in Base Set, and that is also the quickest way to tell the two apart when you put them side by side.

How has the price developed?

We could not reliably trace the original retail price of a Base Set 2 pack, neither for the Netherlands nor for the United States.

The current value is known, though. On Collectr, these are the amounts in October 2026:

• Booster box: €19,179.43 ($21,733.00)
• Loose booster pack: €385.42 ($436.74)

So even a loose pack is no longer a cheap way to get Base Set 2 cards.

Bear in mind with this box that only a few examples are sold publicly each year. A single unusual sale shifts the picture immediately, so look at the line across several years rather than at the last transaction.

Is the Base Set 2 booster box interesting to keep or collect?

Base Set 2 stands in the shadow of the three sets around it, and that cuts both ways. The cards are reprints, so if you want the originals this is not the box. At the same time it is sealed vintage material from the Wizards era that is not being added to, and every box someone still tears open disappears from the market for good.

Wizards of the Coast never disclosed how many boxes were made. What does count: the set was printed in one version only and never got a reprint afterwards. On the other side, this is one of the most accessible ways to get a sealed vintage box with a shot at a Charizard holo into your collection, which makes it especially interesting if you are not ready to step up to the genuinely expensive vintage boxes.

What to weigh up: counterfeits turn up around this box too, as does material that has been resealed. Buy from a seller you trust, ask for clear photos of every side and of the shrink wrap, and at the higher amounts only consider examples that have been assessed by a reputable company.

Please note: card values can go up and down. There is no guarantee of an increase in value.

Frequently asked questions

Is a Charizard from Base Set 2 worth less than the one from Base Set? Yes, and the difference is considerable. The Base Set version is older and exists in a first edition and a shadowless print, and those two send the price soaring. Base Set 2 has none of that. Which is exactly why, for many collectors, this is the most attainable vintage Charizard holo.

Are there energy cards in Base Set 2? Yes, the energy cards from Base Set were carried over. In 2000 that was one of the reasons to buy this set, because Fossil itself contained no energy cards at all and players had to get their energy somewhere.

How can you tell whether a card is from Base Set 2 or from Base Set? By the set symbol at the bottom right of the artwork: a Poke Ball with a 2 running through it. Base Set cards have no symbol at all, because they come from the time before that existed. So if there is a symbol on it, you are holding Base Set 2.

Conclusion

The Base Set 2 booster box is a box of 36 packs from February 2000, with 396 cards from a set that brought Base Set and Jungle together. Twenty Holo Rares can be pulled, with Charizard, Blastoise and Venusaur as the best-known names.

The nice thing about this box is that there is nothing to guess at: there is only one print run, there is no first edition and there is no shadowless variant. What you do watch is the condition of the shrink wrap and where the box came from. For the single cards themselves, also have a look at our Base Set 2 collection.