Live Now on eBay: 1st Edition Staryu

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 Staryu” 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.

Staryu is a Basic Water with 40 HP, illustrated by Keiji Kinebuchi. On a raw copy, confirm the black “Edition 1” stamp sits at the lower-left of the artwork box and the art box is shadowless with the extra ‘99’ in the copyright line — that combination is what separates a true 1st Edition from a Shadowless or Unlimited print.

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

Staryu has carried a secret since 1996: the Pokémon’s Japanese name, Hitodeman, is a mash-up of hitode (starfish) and “man,” a deliberate nod to Ultraman, the tokusatsu hero whose chest gem flashes and chimes when he weakens — exactly what Staryu’s ruby core does in the anime. Its English name splits star with “you,” pairing against Starmie’s “me.” The design itself is a stylized starfish, chosen for the real animal’s ability to regenerate lost limbs, and Ken Sugimori designed the species. On the card, Keiji Kinebuchi — one of the few 3D artists in the young TCG — modelled Staryu in LightWave rather than drawing it, which is why this common looks so precisely of its moment.

The card debuted in the Japanese Expansion Pack with slightly different artwork before reaching English players in the January 1999 Base Set, and it went through four English printings: 1st Edition, Shadowless, Unlimited, and the 1999-2000 ‘4th print’. It was reprinted in Base Set 2 (#95/130) and again in 2016 for XY Evolutions, which reused the original image. In the anime, Misty’s Staryu debuted in “Clefairy and the Moon Stone” and appeared across dozens of episodes, making the starfish a familiar face for a generation. The community’s obsession with this card is the “Red Hickey Staryu” — a magenta printer hickey at the top-left of the artwork — though it appears only on Unlimited copies. Kinebuchi died in 2002, and his quiet role in shaping the game’s first 3D visuals has made his cards a small collecting niche of their own.

How Rare Is This Card?

Start with the number that describes the whole card: roughly 2,485 graded copies exist in total, and ~656 of those are PSA 10s. That is a gem rate of about 26.4% — 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.

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.

Staryu's graded population is large and its gem rate is only about a quarter, which is typical for a handled 1999 common.

That combination keeps the card cheap and makes the PSA 10 a pure condition play rather than a scarcity 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

Bulbapedia, PokéBeach’s error databases, PSA’s Pokémon Error Guide and the Elite Fourum “English Base Set Master Misprint Guide” agree on one Staryu-specific flaw: the “Red Hickey Staryu,” a magenta printer hickey in the top-left corner of the artwork. Every source pins it to Unlimited prints only — the Elite Fourum guide lists it as “Magenta Printer Hickey – Unlimited,” and Bulbapedia describes the same magenta hickey on unlimited prints. PSA’s error guide does not list Staryu at all. Critically, no 1st Edition–specific error is documented for this card in any of the four sources: the red hickey was never reproduced on the 1st Edition or Shadowless runs. Be alert instead to 1st Edition stamp variations (ghost, grey, or double-struck stamps), which are a Base Set–wide phenomenon rather than a Staryu-only defect.

What Makes This Card Collectible?

The 1st Edition Staryu is the affordable entry point into graded Base Set collecting — same stamp, same shadowless template, a fraction of holo money.

• First-print pedigree. The ‘Edition 1’ stamp and shadowless template mark it as part of the opening 1999 run, the print all later variants are measured against.
• A real error to hunt. The magenta “Red Hickey Staryu” gives Unlimited collectors a documented misprint to chase, even though it never appears on 1st Edition copies.
• Artist with a story. Keiji Kinebuchi modelled it in 3D, helped start the TCG’s art, and died in 2002 — a small, poignant collecting niche.

For a common, it does an unusual amount of work: it carries the first-print mystique of Base Set without the holo price.

The Artist: Keiji Kinebuchi

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

Caleb's Collector Verdict

Staryu 1st Edition is the honest way to own a piece of the first English Pokémon set.

People Also Ask

Is my 1st Edition Staryu 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?
Raw near-mint copies sit around $20 and a PSA 10 sells for about $477, so the math only works if the grade comes back near the top. The gem rate is only roughly a quarter of submitted 1st Edition copies, which means most raw cards miss. Unless your copy already looks gem-mint with clean centering and no whitening, keep it raw — grading a $20 common to chase a $477 ceiling is a thin bet.

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