Beedrill 1st Edition Base Set: The Non-Holo That Costs More
Reviewed by Caleb Stapel · Collector · Updated September 2026
1st Edition · Base Set 1999 · Beedrill #17/102
Beedrill holds a distinction that is easy to read straight past: it is the only Stage 2 Pokémon in all of Base Set that is not a holofoil. Every other final-stage Pokémon in the set — Venusaur, Charizard, Blastoise, Nidoking, Machamp and the rest — carries a holo. Beedrill does not, and no amount of art direction explains why. Raw copies trade around $128, while a PSA 10 gem has cleared $3,382. It is a structural oddity that plays a real 80 HP body, drawn by Ken Sugimori.
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 Beedrill printings you own, the 3-second test below settles it before you read any further.
| Grade | Market Price | Share of graded copies |
|---|---|---|
| Ungraded (raw) | $128 | — |
| PSA 7 (NM) | $270 | 13.4% |
| PSA 8 (NM-MT) | $292 | 22.1% |
| PSA 9 (Mint) | $684 | 33.5% |
| PSA 10 (Gem Mint) | $3,384 | 13.1% |
| Grade 6 or below | — | 17.9% |
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 Beedrill
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. Buying through these links supports the site at no extra cost to you.
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Which One Do You Have? The 3-Second Test
Most people who say “I have a 1st Edition Beedrill” 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.
Beedrill is a Stage 2 Grass with 80 HP, evolving from Kakuna, illustrated by Ken Sugimori. Stage 2 uncommons from this run are usually centred acceptably; the common flaw is surface wear on the yellow border.
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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
Beedrill is one of the Pokémon you meet first — a Weedle buzzing in Viridian Forest, a Kakuna on the next route, and eventually this card, sitting in nearly every kid’s shoebox in 1999. As a non-holo Rare it was never the card anyone bragged about. And that is exactly what makes the 1st Edition printing interesting, because it is now the price outlier of Base Set’s non-holo Rares.
Open any Base Set price sheet and the 1st Edition Beedrill sits well above its neighbours — Electrode, Dugtrio, Pidgeotto — despite being no more iconic. The running explanation, talked through for years on Elite Fourum, is supply: PSA has graded meaningfully fewer 1st Edition Beedrills than the other non-holo Rares (roughly 1,100 against higher counts elsewhere), a gap too large to read as chance. Collectors speculate the card sat in an unlucky spot on the uncut print sheet, so fewer survived the cut than its set-mates. Nobody has proven it. The card is, in effect, a quiet scarcity puzzle that set-builders keep bumping into.
The English 1st Edition was not Beedrill’s debut: a Japanese Expansion Pack printing — the “No Rarity” print — preceded it in 1996 by more than two years. Wizards later recycled the card in Base Set 2 (2000), Legendary Collection (2002) and Evolutions (2016). And the species earned its own screen reputation: the Beedrill swarm that abducts Metapod in “Challenge of the Samurai” became shorthand for “do not disturb the forest.”
How Rare Is This Card?
Start with the two numbers that describe the whole card: roughly 1,101 graded copies exist in PSA, and about 144 of those are PSA 10s. That is a gem rate near 13.1% — 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 Beedrill (1999) | ~144 | ~1,101 | 13.1% |
| 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 comparable modern chase card carries a gem rate near 29%. Modern cards grade far better than vintage ones — not because they are better cards, 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.
Beedrill's graded population is small in absolute terms — a Stage 2 uncommon from the smallest print run of the Wizards era was not a card many people paid to have slabbed.
Population source: PriceCharting, September 2026, PSA column only. 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
No Beedrill-specific printing error is documented for the 1st Edition Base Set printing. The famous Beedrill “error” belongs to a different printing: the “D.efending” Beedrill, a typesetting slip in the word “Defending,” sits in the Unlimited run, not 1st Edition. Elite Fourum’s English Base Set Master Misprint Guide lists it plainly as Unlimited; PSA and CGC both recognise it with their own labels. One wiki page muddles the printing — calling it “shadowless” in one line and “unlimited” in the next — but the collector guides agree on Unlimited.
A second Beedrill error, the “Bloody Wing” magenta printer hickey, is likewise catalogued as Unlimited. The only errors touching the 1st Edition run are generic Base Set stamp artefacts — inverted back stamps and smeared front stamps — which are not Beedrill-specific.
What Makes This Card Collectible?
Beedrill is the set’s structural outlier — and the one non-holo Rare in Base Set that routinely costs more than its neighbours.
- The only non-holo Stage 2. Every other final-stage Pokémon in Base Set — Venusaur, Charizard, Blastoise, Nidoking, Machamp — carries a holo. Beedrill is the exception, and it is the reason completionists notice it.
- A scarcity puzzle nobody has solved. Its 1st Edition graded population runs well below its set-mates for no obvious reason; the leading theory is an unlucky position on the uncut sheet.
- Never the card you bragged about. Because it was bulk, plenty survived the playground — which is why clean raw copies are still findable at a modest price.
- Sugimori’s hand. The defining illustrator of the era, on one of the set’s stranger inclusions.
The 1st Edition printing hub explains the stamp and the shadow, and the Base Set hub puts Beedrill in context with the fifteen holos it sits beside.
The Artist: Ken Sugimori
Ken Sugimori is one of the illustrators who defined the look of the original English Pokémon TCG, and Beedrill is one of their Base Set contributions. This section will carry their full numbers when the artist guide lands — how many cards they illustrated across the Wizards era and what one raw copy of each would cost.
Caleb's Collector Verdict
Beedrill is the set-trivia card: the one that answers a question nobody asked, and turns out to matter to completionists.
People Also Ask
Is my 1st Edition Beedrill real or fake?
The 1999 Base Set cards are the most counterfeited 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 — read it with the drop 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.
Should I grade this card?
The population is small enough that a high grade is worth having, and the raw cost is low enough that the fee is the main question. Worth it on a clean copy. See Should You Grade Pokémon Cards? for the fee maths, and check a raw copy with the CardGrader scanner before sending it in.