Alakazam 1st Edition Base Set: The Game's Top Psychic
Reviewed by Caleb Stapel · Collector · Updated September 2026
Alakazam is the strongest Psychic-type of the original set and one of its quietly scarcest 1st Edition gems. Raw copies trade around $646, while a PSA 10 gem has cleared $17,444 — the gap between those two numbers is the whole story of this card.
This page covers the 1st Edition printing specifically — the stamped, shadowless-stock version from the original January 1999 run. If you are unsure which of the Base Set Alakazam printings you own, the 3-second test below settles it before you read any further.
| Grade | Market Price | Share of graded copies |
|---|---|---|
| Ungraded (raw) | $597 | — |
| PSA 7 (NM) | $1,464 | 13.1% |
| PSA 8 (NM-MT) | $2,275 | 17.1% |
| PSA 9 (Mint) | $4,698 | 20.6% |
| PSA 10 (Gem Mint) | $17,432 | 3.7% |
| Grade 6 or below | — | 45.4% |
Prices and population shares: the Cards Worth Chasing ranking, PSA only, September 2026. Shares are of all PSA-graded copies of this card, so they sum to 100% with the grade-6-and-below row. Grading cost basis $59.99 (PSA Standard). Comps move — verify current sold prices before transacting.
Live Now on eBay: 1st Edition Alakazam
What the card is actually being offered for right now. Every listing below is filtered to the genuine 1st Edition card — no repacks, mystery slabs, card skins, or multi-card lots. These are asking prices, not sold comps, so treat them as the top of the market rather than what copies are changing hands for.
Loading current listings…
Which One Do You Have? The 3-Second Test
Most people who say “I have a 1st Edition Alakazam” don’t. Retail packs in 1999–2000 were overwhelmingly Unlimited printing — and that’s fine, it’s the same iconic card. The fast check, in order:
- Right edge of the art box: a dark drop shadow = Unlimited or 4th Print. No shadow = keep going.
- Left of the art box: a black “Edition 1” stamp = 1st Edition. No stamp + no shadow = Shadowless.
- Bottom copyright line: ©1999-2000 = 4th Print. The font weight is the tiebreaker — thin HP text means an early print.
Alakazam is a Stage 2 that evolves from Kadabra, and its 1999 art is one of the few Base Set holos drawn in Ken Sugimori's watercolour style rather than a rendered illustration.
Click to enlarge
Click to enlarge
Click to enlarge
Click to enlarge
PSA 8 prices from PriceCharting sold-comp data, September 2026. Unlimited and 4th Print look nearly identical — the copyright year is the difference. Each printing is its own card with its own price and history; see every printing: 1st Edition · Shadowless · Unlimited · 4th Print.
About This Card and Set
Alakazam is card 1/102 — the first number of the first English set. That position was not a ranking. The Base Set numbered its sixteen holos alphabetically, so Alakazam leads because A comes first, not because Wizards judged it the set's best card. It is an accident of ordering that the hobby has since learned to read as prestige.
The better archaeology here is in the background. In 2021 a collector, FanamelT, traced much of the Base Set's scenery to Sozaijiten — a Japanese stock-image library sold on CD-ROM to designers. Researchers on Elite Fourum then matched nearly all of Sugimori's Base Set illustrations back to images from it, which recasts art long read as invented scenery as, very often, photographic collage. Which library image sits behind Alakazam's spoons and cosmic swirl is not something we could confirm, so we will not name one.
The hand itself is not in doubt. Sugimori illustrated twelve of the sixteen Base Set holos, and Alakazam is one of them. The set's print story — the runs, the stamps, the plate change — is told in the 1st Edition set guide, not retold here.
How Rare Is This Card?
Start with the two numbers that describe the whole card: roughly 2,887 graded copies exist in total, and about 107 of those are PSA 10s. That is a gem rate near 3.7% — and the gem rate, not the raw population, is the number a collector should actually read. High-grade supply is what the market pays for.
| Card | PSA 10s | Total graded | Gem rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st Edition Alakazam (1999) | ~107 | ~2,887 | 3.7% |
| Charizard ex #199, S&V 151 (2023) | 29,679 | 102,490 | ~29% |
PriceCharting population data, September 2026. The modern row is a combined PSA + CGC count; the 1999 row is PSA, the way it is normally quoted.
For scale, compare it with the modern equivalent: a 2023 chase Charizard carries roughly 29,679 gem-grade copies out of about 102,490 graded — a gem rate near 29%, on a card printed and slabbed within a year of release. The modern card has many times the gem supply, at several times this card's gem rate — not because it is a better card, but because a 1999 card was printed before grading was mainstream and then spent two decades in a binder. A vintage gem count is not comparable to a modern one.
Population source: PriceCharting, September 2026. The vintage figure is PSA; the modern figure is a combined PSA + CGC count, which is how each is normally quoted.
Two caveats stay attached to every population figure on this site. Graded counts are submission tallies, not unique cards — resubmissions inflate the total, so the number of genuinely distinct gem copies is lower. And the census is a floor, not a final number: it grows with every submission wave.
Known Error Cards
None are documented for the 1st Edition printing. The error Alakazam is known for — the “Holo Hickey”, a blue ink blob — appears on Unlimited copies only. It is a printer hickey: debris caught on an ink roller, reprinting the same mark onto card after card until it wears away, which is why real hickeys repeat across a sheet and can be catalogued at all.
Two Alakazam arguments remain open, and this is not the place to settle them. Collectors have documented at least two visibly different Unlimited holo backgrounds — one notably blue, one purple — with no agreed cause; low ink, fading and plain mislabelling have all been offered. Separately, cards hand-cut from uncut test sheets have been argued over as authentic or fabricated for more than a decade, and the hobby is still split.
What Makes This Card Collectible?
Alakazam is the set’s scarce-at-the-top card — an unglamorous raw price sitting on a genuinely thin gem population.
- The first card of the game. It is #1/102. In a hobby that cares about firsts, this is the first.
- Scarce exactly where it counts. Only about 107 gem-grade copies are known, because 1st Edition Alakazam was submitted far less than the starters — the scarcity is real but the demand for it is quiet.
- Sugimori art. Ken Sugimori drew twelve of the sixteen Base Set holos; this is one, and the artist's hand defines the era's look.
The Base Set hub compares all four printings, and the Unlimited run is the affordable route to the same artwork.
The Artist: Ken Sugimori
Ken Sugimori (b. 1966) is the founding artist of the franchise — he drew the original 151 Pokémon designs and illustrated the bulk of the 1999 Base Set, including Alakazam. His Base Set work has a distinctive soft-edged, watercolour-and-gouache character that later CGI-era illustrators moved away from.
Caleb's Collector Verdict
Alakazam's numbers make a clean argument: a cheap raw card against a genuinely scarce top grade. That gap is the whole case, and it is why this card rewards a specific kind of buyer.
People Also Ask
Is my 1st Edition Alakazam real or fake?
The 1999 Base Set holos are the most counterfeited cards in the hobby, and for a raw copy worth real money you cannot settle it from a photo. The checks that catch most fakes: the light test (a genuine card is essentially opaque — a faint dark core line between the layers; cheap fakes glow through), the stamp rule (a real 1st Edition stamp is crisp and sits under the ink, and counterfeiters add stamps to Unlimited cards — but a faint grey “ghost” stamp can be an authentic variant, so read it with the shadow and the 1995-99 copyright line, never alone), and the back (fakes perfect the front and neglect the Poké Ball, the blue tone and the repeated text). Above a few hundred dollars, a raw copy should get professional pre-authentication. The full fake-detection walkthrough covers all of it with the CGC forensic case study.
Should I grade this card?
Grade it if the copy is genuinely sharp. Alakazam's raw price is low enough that the fee is a real share of the upside at PSA 7–8, so the case is population-driven rather than price-driven — a high-grade example is much scarcer than the raw number suggests. PSA 9 is where this card starts to pay. See Should You Grade Pokémon Cards? for the fee maths, and check a raw copy with the CardGrader scanner before sending it in.