Japanese Base Set (1996): all 102 cards with PSA prices, and how to spot the No Rarity print

Hi, this is Bunbun. In this series of columns I go through every Japanese old-back set, one at a time, with every card listed. We start where it all began: Expansion Pack vol. 1, known overseas as the Japanese Base Set.

What is it?

• Released on 20 October 1996 as “Pokémon Card Game vol. 1”. It came in two forms: a fixed 60-card Starter Pack and random Expansion Pack boosters.
• 102 cards in total: 69 Pokémon, 26 Trainers and 7 Energy.
• 16 holos: Venusaur, Charizard and Blastoise, plus Clefairy, Ninetales, Alakazam, Machamp, Nidoking, Gyarados, Poliwrath, Raichu, Zapdos, Mewtwo, Hitmonchan, Magneton and Chansey.
• Cards carry no collector number. On this site Pokémon are listed by National Pokédex number; Trainers and Energy have none.
• The English Base Set (1999) was made from this set. When overseas collectors say “Japanese Base Set”, this is the one.

The No Rarity print

There are two print runs. The earliest run is missing the rarity symbol (●, ◆, ★) that normally sits in the bottom-right corner of the card. Japanese collectors call it マークなし (“no mark”); PSA labels it NO RARITY SYMBOL.

• All 102 cards exist in the No Rarity print.
• It is far scarcer than the later print, and the same card in the same grade sells for a multiple of the price. For Charizard PSA 10 the difference is an order of magnitude.
• The check is simple: look at the bottom-right corner, outside the art frame. Even in a slab you can confirm it from the label text and that corner.
• Some sellers write “1st Edition” for Japanese No Rarity cards. Japanese old-back cards have no 1st Edition stamp, so go by the “NO RARITY SYMBOL” wording on the PSA label.

This site treats No Rarity as a variant of the Base Set: each card’s price page shows the two prints separately.

Reading the prices

• Base Set is the most traded old-back series. The gap between PSA 10 and PSA 9 is large, and larger still for holos.
• Trainer and Energy cards in PSA 10 fetch surprising prices, because well-centered copies of these heavily printed cards are rare and the PSA 10 population is small.
• The table below uses the median of the latest confirmed sales (up to five), not the average, so one outlier sale does not move the number.