Gust of Wind 1st Edition Base Set: The Original Gust
Reviewed by Caleb Stapel · Collector · Updated September 2026
Gust of Wind is the 1999 Base Set Trainer that quietly named a whole mechanic — dragging a Benched Pokémon forward is still called 'gusting' because of this card. As a Common it was pulled by the millions and rarely survived in top condition, and its Keiji Kinebuchi art belongs to a small, finished body of early 3D work. Raw Near Mint copies sit around $20, while a PSA 10 reaches $350.
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 Gust of Wind printings you own, the 3-second test below settles it before you read any further.
| Grade | Market Price | Share of graded copies |
|---|---|---|
| Ungraded (raw) | $20 | — |
| PSA 7 (NM) | $27 | 6.8% |
| PSA 8 (NM-MT) | $38 | 18.5% |
| PSA 9 (Mint) | $99 | 44.7% |
| PSA 10 (Gem Mint) | $350 | 23.1% |
| Grade 6 or below | — | 6.8% |
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 Gust of Wind
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 Gust of Wind” 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 text means an early print.
Gust of Wind is an Trainer, illustrated by Keiji Kinebuchi. In a raw copy, confirm the black 'Edition 1' stamp below the artwork is solid and fully inked — grey, thin, or smeared stamps are the stamp-family variants — and check the back's lower area for a faint mirrored stamp imprint where wet ink can transfer.
The four printings of Base Set each have their own price and history: 1st Edition · Shadowless · Unlimited · 4th Print.
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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
Gust of Wind is card 93/102, a Common Trainer in the 1999 Base Set, illustrated by Keiji Kinebuchi — the 3D artist who built most of the game’s early Trainer art in LightWave and gave the first cards their flat, studio-lit look. Its effect pulled a Benched Pokémon into the Active spot, and that single action proved so defining that the whole category still carries its name: any bench-dragging attack or Ability is a ‘gust’, and players call the play ‘gusting’. Bulbapedia traces the lineage forward through Pokémon Catcher, the Supporter Lysandre, and finally Boss’s Orders. Released January 9, 1999, it was an ordinary booster common, never a chase card.
The card is also a printing story. Because no Base Set Trainer ever received a drop shadow, the 1st Edition and Shadowless Gust of Wind are nearly identical apart from the ‘Edition 1’ stamp — a quiet trap for newer collectors. It was reprinted in Base Set 2 as 120/130 in 2000, with a new set symbol and no 1st Edition run, and it appeared in several Japanese theme decks and the Game Boy TCG. It sat in the Base Set theme decks (Blackout, Brushfire, Overgrowth, Zap) at one or two copies, so most 1999 collections held several. Kinebuchi died in 2002, closing a small, instantly dated body of work. Nostalgia here is quiet: nobody chases a common, but almost every vintage player knows its verb.
How Rare Is This Card?
Start with the number that describes the whole card: roughly 1,184 graded copies exist in total, and ~274 of those are PSA 10s. That is a gem rate of about 23.1% — and the gem rate, not the raw population, is what a collector should actually be reading. High-grade supply is what the market pays for.
| Card | PSA 10s | Total graded | Gem rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gust of Wind 1st Edition (1999) | ~274 | ~1,184 | ~23.1% |
| 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.
Gust of Wind carries a mid-sized graded population with roughly a quarter coming back gem.
Its interest is documentary — the card named a mechanic the game still uses — so the PSA 10 is a condition premium, not a rarity one.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 Gust of Wind–specific design error is documented in Bulbapedia’s Base Set error list, PSA’s Pokémon Error Guide, PokeBeach’s misprint database, or Elite Fourum’s Master Misprint Guide (thread 41753) and Unlimited-Only list (thread 25307). The card has no corrected or uncorrected variant. It does sit inside the set-wide 1st Edition stamp-error family: grey or low-ink stamps, thin and thick stamps, smudged or smeared front stamps — Bulbapedia notes Trainer cards are the most affected by smudged stamps — and inverted back-stamp ink-transfer marks left when wet sheets were stacked. These are 1st Edition or 1st Edition/Shadowless issues, not Unlimited ones. The famous Base Set errors — Vulpix’s ‘HP 50’, Blastoise’s missing ‘Stage’, Wartortle’s evolution box, Diglett’s rotated Energy symbol, and the Water Energy title — are Unlimited-only and must never be attached to a 1st Edition copy.
What Makes This Card Collectible?
For a common, Gust of Wind carries an unusual amount of story, and that is what a collector is really buying.
- The verb itself. Gust of Wind is the reason the bench-dragging mechanic is called 'gusting', a piece of living TCG vocabulary no other Base Set common owns.
- Printing hunt. Base Set Trainers never got a drop shadow, so 1st Edition and Shadowless copies differ only by the stamp, a quiet trap that makes the 1st Edition the one to actually verify.
- The artist. Keiji Kinebuchi built this art in 3D software and died in 2002, leaving his flat, early-Trainer look a closed and finished body of work.
It will never be a trophy card, but it is one of the few commons with a real claim to having shaped how players talk about the game.
The Artist: Keiji Kinebuchi
Keiji Kinebuchi is one of the illustrators who defined the look of the original English Pokémon TCG, and Gust of Wind is one of their Base Set contributions. This section will carry their full numbers when the artist guide lands.
Caleb's Collector Verdict
Gust of Wind is a modest common with an outsized legacy: it named a mechanic that outlived it by two decades.
People Also Ask
Is my 1st Edition Gust of Wind 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?
Grading makes sense mainly as a presentation choice, not an economic one: with raw Near Mint copies around $20 and a PSA 10 at $350, the spread only opens up on a genuinely clean card. PSA's 1st Edition population shows roughly 273 tens against a bit over a thousand graded copies — about a quarter gem — so a sharp raw example can be worth submitting. A played or off-center copy should stay in a binder.