Devolution Spray 1st Edition Base Set: The Reversed Evolver
Reviewed by Caleb Stapel · Collector · Updated September 2026
Devolution Spray is the one Base Set card that runs the game’s defining mechanic in reverse, stripping an Evolution off one of your own Pokémon and clearing its status effects with it. Nothing else in the set undoes an evolution, and the game barely revisited the idea. Raw copies sit near $34, with a 10.7% Gem Mint rate.
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 Devolution Spray printings you own, the 3-second test below settles it before you read any further.
| Grade | Market Price | Share of graded copies |
|---|---|---|
| Ungraded (raw) | $34 | — |
| PSA 7 (NM) | $39 | 8.3% |
| PSA 8 (NM-MT) | $56 | 26.0% |
| PSA 9 (Mint) | $172 | 46.2% |
| PSA 10 (Gem Mint) | $1,147 | 10.7% |
| Grade 6 or below | — | 8.8% |
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 Devolution Spray
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.
Loading current listings…
Which One Do You Have? The 3-Second Test
Most people who say “I have a 1st Edition Devolution Spray” 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.
Devolution Spray is a Trainer card illustrated by Keiji Kinebuchi. Check the edges for shuffle wear; Trainers from this era were handled constantly.
The four printings of Base Set each have their own price and history: 1st Edition · Shadowless · Unlimited · 4th Print.
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
Devolution Spray is card 72/102, a Rare Trainer first printed in the Japanese Expansion Pack and carried into Wizards of the Coast’s debut English release. It is the single Base Set card that runs the game’s defining mechanic in reverse, and it stands as one of the earliest appearances of de-evolution in the whole Pokémon franchise. Its illustrator was Keiji Kinebuchi, whose name is on a large share of the set’s Trainers.
Design-wise the card reads as a deliberate counterweight. Evolution is the engine of the trading card game, so the designers gave themselves a card that could undo it, and they built a small family around the idea: Pokémon Breeder pushes a Pokémon further along its evolutionary line, Devolution Spray pulls it back. Whether the two were conceived as a matched pair is not documented, and no source supports that claim. What is documented is how scarce the mechanic stayed: a successor did not arrive until Neo Discovery in 2001.
Rule clarifications followed the card rather than corrected it. Wizards-era judge rulings confirmed that a Pokémon devolved this way could be evolved again in the same turn, and that energy already applied survived the reversal. The card also seeds the modern vocabulary: English cards of the era preferred the long phrase “remove the highest stage Evolution card,” and the compact verb “devolve” only became standard in later generations.
Collector memory is affectionate and a little cruel. For years it was remembered as one of the most underwhelming rares in the set, a card that did almost nothing anyone wanted, and that reputation has never quite lifted. Later reprints in Dragons Exalted, Fates Collide and Evolutions either restated the effect or replaced it outright.
How Rare Is This Card?
Read this card by its grade split rather than by a headline population. 10.7% of PSA-graded copies reach PSA 10, 8.8% come back grade 6 or below, and the rest land in between — which is what set the price ladder above.
Devolution Spray carries the narrowest odds of this Trainer group at a 10.7% Gem Mint rate on a $34 raw copy.
| Card | PSA 10s | Total graded | Gem rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st Edition Devolution Spray (1999) | ~128 | ~1,198 | 10.7% |
| 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, a comparable modern chase card converts to a gem grade at roughly 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.
Source: the PSA-only figures behind the Cards Worth Chasing ranking, September 2026. Two caveats stay attached to every population figure on this site. Graded counts are submission tallies, not unique cards — resubmissions inflate the total. And the census is a floor, not a final number.
Known Error Cards
No error card is documented for the Devolution Spray in the 1st Edition Base Set printing. The check was run against four independent references — Bulbapedia’s “Error cards” page, PSA’s Pokémon Error Guide, PokéBeach’s error and misprint database, and Elite Fourum’s Masters Guide together with its English Base Set Master Misprint Guide — and all four agree. Every catalogued Base Set error belongs to another card: Vulpix’s reversed HP, the Blastoise, Wartortle and Diglett errors, the Ninetales missing-damage print. None of the four names this card.
One recurring confusion belongs to a different set entirely. A green-versus-yellow ink variation on the Devolution Spray is well documented, but it is the 2016 XY Evolutions reprint, card 76/108, not the 1999 1st Edition. The Base Set 1st Edition is a separate printing and is not implicated.
What Makes This Card Collectible?
Devolution Spray earns its place as the set’s oddity rather than its power:
- A mechanic the game never repeated at this scale. Undoing an evolution stayed rare for years — the effect did not return in force until Neo Discovery in 2001.
- An idea the franchise treats as unusual. De-evolution is rarer in Pokémon media than evolution itself, which gives the card a conceptual weight its price does not reflect.
Its partner card is covered in the Pokémon Breeder review; the Base Set hub covers the rest.
The Artist: Keiji Kinebuchi
Keiji Kinebuchi is one of the illustrators who defined the look of the original English Pokémon TCG, and Devolution Spray is one of their Base Set contributions. This section will carry their full numbers when the artist guide lands.
Caleb's Collector Verdict
Devolution Spray is Base Set’s quiet oddity: a card that undoes the game’s central mechanic, priced as a throw-in and remembered mostly for how little it did.
People Also Ask
Is my 1st Edition Devolution Spray 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, the stamp rule (read together with the drop shadow and the 1995-99 copyright line, never alone), and the back. 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?
This is the hardest grade in the batch on odds — 10.7%. Only send a copy you are confident in. See Should You Grade Pokémon Cards? for the fee maths, and check a raw copy with the CardGrader scanner before sending it in.