Nidoking 1st Edition Base Set: A Founding Monster
Reviewed by Caleb Stapel · Collector · Updated September 2026
Nidoking is the scarcest stamped holo in the set by modelled PSA 10 population — a card the market has not fully priced in. Raw copies trade around $465, while a PSA 10 gem has cleared $14,502 — 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 Nidoking printings you own, the 3-second test below settles it before you read any further.
| Grade | Market Price | Share of graded copies |
|---|---|---|
| Ungraded (raw) | $465 | — |
| PSA 7 (NM) | $671 | 15.4% |
| PSA 8 (NM-MT) | $912 | 18.9% |
| PSA 9 (Mint) | $2,112 | 24.5% |
| PSA 10 (Gem Mint) | $14,422 | 3.7% |
| Grade 6 or below | — | 37.5% |
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 Nidoking
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 Nidoking” 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.
Nidoking is a Stage 2 Pokémon that the card prints as Grass — a Poison/Ground species in the games. The 1999 art sets the heavy, spiked silhouette against a dark background.
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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
Nidoking is card #11 of the 102-card English Base Set that Wizards of the Coast released on January 9, 1999 — one of the set’s sixteen holofoil rares. In the video games Nidoking is a Poison/Ground bruiser; on this card it is printed as a Grass-type. The young TCG folded Poison into Grass energy, so the “king of poison” ended up wearing the wrong colour — a mismatch that became the card’s defining quirk. Nidoking was a Gen I favourite long before the set shipped, having already headlined the anime as Gary’s Pokémon in “The Battle of the Badge.”
As a Base Set holo it was common enough that most 1990s kids handled one, and rare enough in clean condition to matter now. Young collectors played with their holos, so Gem Mint survivors are scarce: PSA has graded thousands of Nidoking #11 examples and certified only around 91 as a perfect 10 — a gem rate near 3.4%.
The design was reprinted repeatedly — Base Set 2 in 2000, Japan’s Pokémon Web in 2001, and Legendary Collection in 2002 — always as a Grass-type. Then 2016’s Evolutions set reissued it as a Psychic-type, following the modern mapping of Poison onto Psychic energy. Purists objected; on collector forums one called it maddening precisely because the old Grass typing felt like part of the card’s identity.
How Rare Is This Card?
Start with the two numbers that describe the whole card: roughly 2,834 graded copies exist in total, and about 98 of those are PSA 10s. That is a gem rate near 3.5% — 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 Nidoking (1999) | ~98 | ~2,834 | 3.5% |
| 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 for scale, take a modern chase card printed and slabbed within a year of release: it can carry tens of thousands of gem-grade copies against a gem rate near 29%. The modern card has many times this card’s gem supply at several times its 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, 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
Across four reference sources, no error is documented specifically for the 1st Edition Nidoking printing. Both Bulbapedia and Elite Fourum’s English Base Set Master Misprint Guide tie Nidoking’s known misprints to the Unlimited run. Elite Fourum catalogues a “Green Holo Dot Nidoking” — a cyan printer hickey; Bulbapedia adds blue ovals of missing yellow ink, a water-drip obstruction on the yellow plate, and a black printer hickey over the “E” in “STAGE 2.”
PSA’s Pokémon Error Guide lists no Nidoking entry at all, and PokéBeach’s database omits the card. The one general 1st Edition caveat is a set-wide class of stamp anomalies — smeared or back-transferred stamps — reported for commons and uncommons generally, but no such Nidoking example is verified.
What Makes This Card Collectible?
Nidoking is a founding-design card with a thin gem population and no marquee price attached.
- It is a founding monster. Sugimori names it himself, in a translated 2000 interview, as one of the ~20–30 designs that survived his first drawing sessions for what became Pokémon.
- The art is reuse, not a commission. The card carries a 1996 Red/Green watercolour over a photographic background — the Base Set’s actual production method, in one object.
- Thin at the top. Roughly 98 PSA 10s against a modest raw price — scarcity without the flagship entry cost.
- The error nickname is a different card. “Green Holo Dot Nidoking” is a catalogued collector name — on Unlimited, so an error-hunter and a 1st Edition buyer are chasing different objects.
The four printings sit side by side on the Base Set hub, and if you want the same artwork for pocket change, the Unlimited run is the way in.
The Artist: Ken Sugimori
Ken Sugimori (b. 1966) is a co-founder of Game Freak and the artist who finalised the original 151, and Nidoking is one of the earliest creatures he drew for the project. The card reproduces his 1996 Red/Green watercolour — the harder-edged of his two Nidoking paintings — composited onto a photographic background rather than drawn fresh for 1999.
Caleb's Collector Verdict
Nidoking is the quiet archaeologist’s holo: a founding-monster watercolour whose entire error mythology lives on the cheaper printings, leaving the 1st Edition as the clean, under-appreciated specimen.
People Also Ask
Is my 1st Edition Nidoking 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 — one of the stronger grading cases among the mid-tier holos. A gem population of roughly 98 on a card that trades at a mid-tier price is a real mismatch between scarcity and value. If your copy is sharp and well-centred, the expected value is good; PSA 9 is the realistic target. See Should You Grade Pokémon Cards? for the fee maths, and check a raw copy with the CardGrader scanner before sending it in.