Live Now on eBay: 1st Edition Electabuzz

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.

Which One Do You Have? The 3-Second Test

Most people who say “I have a 1st Edition Electabuzz” 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:

1. Right edge of the art box: a dark drop shadow = Unlimited or 4th Print. No shadow = keep going.
2. Left of the art box: a black “Edition 1” stamp = 1st Edition. No stamp + no shadow = Shadowless.
3. Bottom copyright line: ©1999-2000 = 4th Print. The font weight is the tiebreaker — thin HP text means an early print.

Electabuzz is a Basic Lightning with 70 HP, illustrated by Ken Sugimori. This is a played card — expect edge wear and surface scuffing on much of the raw supply, and price a clean copy accordingly.

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

Electabuzz is card 20/102, one of the sixteen non-holo Rares and one of only two Lightning-types in that tier, alongside Electrode at 21/102. The 1st Edition is this card’s first English appearance — a black “Edition 1” stamp just left of the artwork, on shadowless stock with no drop shadow down the right edge of the art box.

Its English name was invented for the localisation. The Japanese original is Eleboo, and the English release built “Electabuzz” from “electric” and “buzz” — a straightforward coinage where the Japanese name is not. The species’ design lineage is the more interesting thread: it draws on the thunder gods of Japanese folklore, the oni-and-Raijin tradition, which is where its striped markings and horns come from.

Its first life was Japanese: it debuted in the Expansion Pack in October 1996, more than two years before the English Base Set arrived on 9 January 1999, and collectors have looked back at the very earliest development documentation ever since — one proto-design published from that period is listed under a different name and the source declines to identify it definitively, noting it may equally be Magmar.

The species’ animated debut came in the Kanto episode “Showdown at Dark City,” where an Electabuzz belonging to the Kaz Gym leader appeared. Collectors also separate the Base Set card from the Black Star promo version of the same Pokémon, which carries its own stamp and history.

How Rare Is This Card?

Start with the two numbers that describe the whole card: roughly 1,464 graded copies exist in PSA, and about 209 of those are PSA 10s. That is a gem rate near 14.3% — 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.

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.

Electabuzz was printed heavily and graded steadily, which is reflected in both the population and the price. A card this recognisable at this price is the comfortable end of the set rather than the speculative one.

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

Across the four standard references — Bulbapedia’s “Error cards” page, PSA’s Pokémon Error Guide, the PokéBeach error and misprint database, and Elite Fourum’s English Base Set Master Misprint Guide — no repeating, catalogued error is attributed to Electabuzz 20/102, in the 1st Edition printing or any other.

The Base Set errors those sources do document belong to other cards: Blastoise’s missing Stage text and faded Illus. credit, Ninetales’ absent damage on Shadowless, Pikachu’s ghost stamp, Diglett’s sideways Fighting symbol, Wartortle’s evolution-box image, Beedrill’s “D.efending”. None of them touches 20/102. The 1st Edition does share one class of variation, though it is not specific to this card: the stamp itself can appear grey, thin, thick or smeared, and copies can carry faint stamp transfers on the back. Collectors treat these as stamp variants of the run rather than a catalogued error of any single card. One older community list names Electabuzz among cards with slightly off-centre attack energy symbols; the claim is uncorroborated and absent from all four references.

What Makes This Card Collectible?

Electabuzz earns its place on design and naming rather than on anything card-mechanical:

• A folklore lineage, not a technical one. The design draws on the thunder gods of Japanese tradition rather than on anything electrical.
• A localisation coinage. “Electabuzz” was invented for the English release; the Japanese original is Eleboo.
• One of only two Lightning non-holo Rares. It shares that tier with Electrode at 21/102 and nothing else.

For the other half of the deck see the Hitmonchan review; the Base Set hub covers the rest of the era.

The Artist: Ken Sugimori

Ken Sugimori is one of the illustrators who defined the look of the original English Pokémon TCG, and Electabuzz 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

Electabuzz is the design-history pick of this block: a card whose English name was invented for it, whose look came from Japanese thunder-god tradition, and whose story sits in the earliest development documentation of the franchise.

People Also Ask

Is my 1st Edition Electabuzz 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?
Because Electabuzz was a card people actually played with, a lot of the surviving raw stock is worn, so a high grade is more meaningful here than the raw count implies. Grade it if the copy is genuinely sharp. See Should You Grade Pokémon Cards? for the fee maths, and check a raw copy with the CardGrader scanner before sending it in.

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