Live Now on eBay: 1st Edition Koffing

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 Koffing” 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 text means an early print.

Koffing is a Basic Grass with 50 HP, illustrated by Mitsuhiro Arita. Check centring first, then the border, where wear shows on this printing.

The four printings of Base Set each have their own price and history: 1st Edition · Shadowless · Unlimited · 4th Print.

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

Koffing is card 51/102 of the English Pokémon Base Set — a Common Grass-type Basic illustrated by Mitsuhiro Arita. Wizards of the Coast released the set in North America on 9 January 1999, translating the Japanese Expansion Pack that had debuted in October 1996. The 1st Edition is the launch print run: every card carries the black “Edition 1” stamp beneath the left of the art box, on shadowless stock — no drop shadow beside the illustration frame, a lighter HP font, and a copyright line reading ©1995, 96, 98.

Much of the species’ recognition comes from television rather than the table. James of Team Rocket carried a Koffing from the first Kanto episodes, leaning on its Smokescreen for the trio’s getaways before it evolved into Weezing in “Dig Those Diglett!” (episode 31). In the later Hoenn episode “A Poached Ego!” James released Weezing so it could guard a cage of captive Koffing — one of the anime’s better-remembered farewells to an early partner.

Weezing was conspicuously absent from Base Set. Its first card arrived one expansion later, in Fossil, matching the documented pattern in which fully evolved forms were held back — and the absence runs across the whole Base Set lineage, since Weezing was missing from the Japanese Expansion Pack too. Within Japan, the Base Set Koffing also has a second life: a rare alternate print by Natsu Sato, one of five winning entries in a 1999 Pokémon Snap Best Photo Contest, carrying a camera graphic where a set symbol would go.

How Rare Is This Card?

Read this card by its grade split rather than by a headline population. 23.3% of PSA-graded copies reach PSA 10, 7.8% come back grade 6 or below, and the rest land in between — which is what set the price ladder above. The odds column is the number that matters, because high-grade supply is what the market actually pays for.

Koffing’s graded population is mid-sized and its Gem Mint rate is 23.3%, a fair ratio against a raw cost near $30.

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 is catalogued for Koffing #51/102 in any of the standard references. Bulbapedia’s Error cards page lists no Koffing entry for Base Set; PSA’s Pokémon Error Guide names only the Pikachu Ghost Stamp under 1999 Base Set; PokeBeach’s error database and Elite Fourum’s English Base Set Master Misprint Guide both cover the set card by card without a Koffing entry. The 1st Edition Koffing is clean.

One separate category does touch the card. The 1st Edition print as a whole produced stamping faults rather than design faults: grey or low-ink stamps, smudged and thick stamps, and ink transferred to the reverse of stacked sheets, leaving an inverted stamp on the back. These appear across 1st Edition commons, Koffing included, and are treated by collectors as variant stamping rather than a Koffing error.

What Makes This Card Collectible?

Koffing is collected for a television career rather than a mechanic:

• James’s first partner. Team Rocket’s Koffing was a signature Pokémon from the earliest Kanto episodes.
• An unfinished line. The Base Set left Weezing out entirely; it arrived one expansion later in Fossil.
• A rare Japanese alternate print. A Contest-winning Koffing by Natsu Sato carries a camera graphic in place of a set symbol.

Its counterpart is the Gastly review; the Base Set hub covers the run.

The Artist: Mitsuhiro Arita

Mitsuhiro Arita is one of the illustrators who defined the look of the original English Pokémon TCG, and Koffing is one of their Base Set contributions. This section will carry their full numbers when the artist guide lands.

Caleb's Collector Verdict

Koffing is a small common with a large screen footprint — the card that carries a generation’s memory of Team Rocket.

People Also Ask

Is my 1st Edition Koffing 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?
Koffing is a $30 raw with a 23.3% gem rate — a fair ratio, best graded for the set. 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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