Clefairy 1st Edition Base Set: 66 Gems at a Common's Price
Reviewed by Caleb Stapel · Collector · Updated September 2026
Clefairy is the second-scarcest stamped holo in the set, and one of its most consistently under-priced cards. Raw copies trade around $255, while a PSA 10 gem has cleared $9,126 — 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 Clefairy printings you own, the 3-second test below settles it before you read any further.
| Grade | Market Price | Share of graded copies |
|---|---|---|
| Ungraded (raw) | $255 | — |
| PSA 7 (NM) | $750 | 15.6% |
| PSA 8 (NM-MT) | $1,176 | 21.9% |
| PSA 9 (Mint) | $3,350 | 22.0% |
| PSA 10 (Gem Mint) | $9,126 | 3.0% |
| Grade 6 or below | — | 37.4% |
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 Clefairy
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.
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Which One Do You Have? The 3-Second Test
Most people who say “I have a 1st Edition Clefairy” 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.
Clefairy is a Basic Colorless-type with only 40 HP — the lowest of any Base Set holo. That fragility in play is part of why so few survived in mint condition, and it makes Clefairy one of the more under-priced scarcity plays in the set.
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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
Clefairy is card 5/102, one of the sixteen holos, and it is the set's best “what could have been” story. Sugimori has said the design was his attempt at a cute mascot, and that he expected it to represent the franchise — before Pikachu took the role entirely. Clefairy fronted the earliest Pokémon manga appearances, and then watched the mascot job go elsewhere.
The art thread is the more surprising one. Research published in 2021 showed that much of the Base Set's scenery traces back to Sozaijiten, a Japanese stock-image library sold on CD-ROM to designers — which reframes a lot of what had been read as painted background as photographic collage. Clefairy sits inside that finding rather than outside it. The set's print story lives in the 1st Edition set guide.
How Rare Is This Card?
Start with the two numbers that describe the whole card: roughly 2,518 graded copies exist in total, and about 80 of those are PSA 10s. That is a gem rate near 3.2% — 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 Clefairy (1999) | ~80 | ~2,518 | 3.2% |
| 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. Both Clefairy errors belong to the Unlimited run.
The “Red Heart” is the famous one: a magenta ink blob that happens to read as a heart inside a circle, sitting beside the card's name. It is a printer hickey, and because the mark fades as the roller wears, the fullest copies are the most desirable. Both PSA and CGC recognise it on the label.
It also earned a genuine argument. Collectors spent years accusing each other of hand-stamping hearts onto ordinary Clefairys to manufacture a rarity, and the thread is still findable. The physical case against the hoax theory is straightforward — a stamp would remove ink rather than add it, and would leave an outline, not a filled shape — but the accusation is part of the card's story. The “Black Dot” error, a blob over the attack text, is the quieter sibling.
What Makes This Card Collectible?
The case for this card, specifically:
- The \u201calmost mascot\u201d story. Clefairy led the franchise in its earliest manga appearances before Pikachu took the role — a real piece of Pokémon history.
- Genuinely scarce at the top. About 80 gem-grade 1st Edition copies — the second-smallest holo gem population in the set.
- Cheap raw, scarce gem. The mismatch between its population and its price is the most striking in Base Set.
- Sugimori art. The artist who drew most of the set, on a card that represents its earliest era.
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) drew the Base Set Clefairy. The 1999 card art is close to his original species design, with the soft translucent wings that later illustrations rendered with more detail and considerably less charm.
Caleb's Collector Verdict
Clefairy is the sharpest scarcity-to-price mismatch in Base Set: one of the smallest gem populations in the set, trading like a common.
People Also Ask
Is my 1st Edition Clefairy 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?
Yes — the population makes it worth it. With roughly 80 PSA 10s in the stamped printing, Clefairy is one of the scarcest gems in Base Set, and a sharp, well-centred copy is one of the better expected-value submissions among the mid-tier holos. PSA 9 is where the value sits. See Should You Grade Pokémon Cards? for the fee maths, and check a raw copy with the CardGrader scanner before sending it in.