The Base Set booster box is the box the whole hobby started with. Thirty-six packs of the cards everyone knows, from a time when nobody could have guessed how big this would get. In this blog you'll read when the box came out, how to tell a first edition from a Shadowless or Unlimited box, what's inside it exactly, which cards you can pull and how the price has developed since.

When did the Base Set booster box come out?

Base Set was released on 9 January 1999 in English, published by Wizards of the Coast. It was the first English Pokémon set ever: 102 cards, sixteen of them holos. From that moment the booster box sat on American shelves, and in 1999 and 2000 the rest of the world followed with German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and also Dutch cards.

Everything you buy today therefore comes from that first period. After the Wizards years the box was never made again: the cards were reprinted in other sets later, but not a single copy of this box has been added since.

First edition, Shadowless or Unlimited?

Within that first year three print runs of Base Set were made, and the difference in value between them is large.

1st Edition. The very first run. The cards carry the familiar round 1st Edition stamp, and the box itself is marked as first edition too. The fewest of these were made, and these are the boxes the record amounts are paid for.

Shadowless. Printed right after, without the stamp, but still without the shadow to the right of the Pokémon artwork. The font and the HP box also look different from later cards, and the copyright line at the bottom of the card still reads 99. This run is smaller than Unlimited and therefore clearly worth more. In the photo below you see a box with the green wings, the feature collectors look for. Note: that makes Shadowless more likely, but it is no guarantee. Further down you'll read why.

Unlimited. The big run almost everyone pulled their cards from in 1999 and 2000. These cards have the shadow next to the artwork, and this is the version you come across most often.

How do you tell from a sealed box which run is inside?

With 1st Edition it's simple: it says so on the box itself, so you can see it without opening it.

With Shadowless it's a different story, and this is the most important thing to know before you buy. There is no separate Shadowless box. Wizards never released one as its own product. Shadowless cards come from the boxes that rolled off the press right after the first edition, and those boxes are not marked as such on the outside. So with a sealed box you can never say with certainty that there are Shadowless packs inside. You do have a good chance, and that is exactly why these boxes cost more than a regular Unlimited.

What you do have are indicators that make the chance bigger or smaller:

• Charizard's wings on the side. Green wings belong to the early boxes, blue to the later ones. This is the best-known indicator, but there are boxes with green wings that turn out to hold Unlimited packs after all.
• The logo on the shrink-wrap. No logo, or the older rectangular Wizards logo, points towards Shadowless. A curved Wizards logo belongs to the later Unlimited boxes.
• The information on the bottom. If there is only one country code, or the customer service details are missing, the chance of Shadowless is bigger. Multiple country codes point to a later run.

You only get certainty once the box is open. On Shadowless packs the Trading Card Game logo sits at the bottom of the wrapper, on Unlimited packs at the top. Which also means: anyone selling a sealed box as Shadowless is doing so on probability, not on proof. Always ask for clear photos of every side and of the shrink-wrap, and be critical if a seller presents Shadowless as an established fact. How much those first months matter you can see in the cards themselves in the most expensive Charizard card ever: Shadowless 1st Edition.

What's in the Base Set booster box?

• 36 booster packs Base Set
• 11 cards per pack, so 396 cards in total
• Per pack 1 rare, 3 uncommons, 5 commons and 2 energy cards
• Three different pack artworks: Charizard, Blastoise and Venusaur

That's all there is. No promo card, no sleeves, no dice: this is a box of packs and nothing else. The rare in each pack can be a holo, but it isn't always, and that's exactly what made opening a box so exciting.

Which cards can you pull?

Base Set has 16 holos, but you can only pull 15 of them from booster packs. Machamp (8/102) was never in a pack: that entire run went into the 2-Player Starter Set, where it came loose in a plastic sleeve. So anyone collecting their holos from boxes will always be one Machamp short.

The other fifteen are in there: Charizard (4/102), Blastoise (2/102), Venusaur (15/102), Alakazam, Chansey, Clefairy, Gyarados, Hitmonchan, Magneton, Mewtwo, Nidoking, Ninetales, Poliwrath, Raichu and Zapdos.

Charizard is the card this box revolves around. He was never printed as a regular rare, so the holo is the only Charizard from Base Set, and that card in particular has become the symbol of the entire hobby. On top of that the set counts 16 regular rares, 32 uncommons, 32 commons and the six energy cards.

Exactly what comes out of a box differs from box to box. From this period there is no reliable pack test with enough opened boosters, so hard percentages on how often you pull a holo simply don't exist. What those cards are worth individually, and how much difference the print run makes, we line up in Top 20 Chase Cards of Base Set.

How has the price developed?

The original retail price can be traced, just not for the Netherlands. In American stores a Base Set booster pack sold for $3.29, an amount found on a surviving receipt from 1999. Thirty-six of those packs together comes to roughly $118 for a whole box. What it cost here in guilders isn't documented, so we'll leave that open.

From that starting point the three runs drift far apart:

• 1st Edition: €263,029.43
• Green wings (chance of Shadowless): €75,335.76
• Unlimited: €44,082.18

That puts the sealed 1st Edition box right at the top, among the most expensive sealed products in the hobby: over three times the box with the green wings, and almost six times Unlimited. Unlimited is the version that changes hands most often and is therefore the most accessible, but even there the box that went over the counter for the equivalent of about a hundred euros in 1999 is now an amount you could buy a car with. Prices from Collectr, September 2026.

With amounts like these, bear in mind that few of these boxes are sold publicly per year, and only a handful of the first edition. A single unusual auction shifts the picture immediately. So look at the line across several years rather than at the last sale.

Is the Base Set booster box worth keeping?

This is no longer a box you buy to open. The gap between what a sealed box does and what the cards inside fetch individually has grown too large, certainly for the first two runs. Anyone who buys one buys it to leave it exactly as it is.

Scarcity works in its favour: not a single box is being added, and every box someone does tear open disappears from the market for good. How many boxes were made per run Wizards of the Coast never disclosed, but that there are far fewer of the first edition than of Unlimited is certain.

What you have to weigh up: at these amounts counterfeits come along too, and boxes that have been resealed. Buy from a seller you trust and, at the top amounts, only look at copies assessed by a reputable company. And realise that the price of a box like this is set by a small group of buyers.

Please note: the value of cards can rise and fall. No guarantee of an increase in value.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a Dutch Base Set as well? Yes. Base Set also came out in Dutch in 2000, so Dutch Base Set cards really do exist. The boxes you come across on the market are almost always English though, and that's also the version most collectors are looking for.

Am I better off buying single packs than a whole box? A single pack is the cheapest way to hold something from this set, but you don't know where that pack has been. Single packs from this period have been weighed and searched for holos on a massive scale. A pack that demonstrably comes from a sealed box is a lot safer.

Is a Base Set 2 booster box the same? No. Base Set 2 came out on 24 February 2000 and is a reprint set of 130 cards from Base Set and Jungle mixed together. Different box, different logo and a completely different price tag.

Conclusion

The Base Set booster box is a box of 36 packs from January 1999, with 396 cards from the first English Pokémon set ever. Fifteen of the sixteen holos can be pulled from it, with Charizard as the card everyone hopes for.

The most important thing with this box is which run you have in your hands. 1st Edition is printed on the box, so that can be checked. Shadowless can't: with a sealed box that always stays a matter of probability based on the wings, the shrink-wrap and the bottom. So know what you're looking at before you buy, and for the cards themselves have a look at our Base Set collection too.