Live Now on eBay: 1st Edition Super Energy Removal

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 Super Energy Removal” 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.

Super Energy Removal is a Trainer card illustrated by Keiji Kinebuchi. Played Trainers show shuffle wear on the edges; this one is often cleaner than a played Pokémon card from the same era.

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

Super Energy Removal is card 79/102 in the English Base Set — a Rare Trainer illustrated by Keiji Kinebuchi and released by Wizards of the Coast on 9 January 1999. Like the set's other Trainers it localises a card from Japan's Expansion Pack of October 1996, and its 1st Edition printing carries the black stamp on shadowless stock that defines the earliest English run, sitting in the Rare tier between Scoop Up and Defender.

Its reputation precedes it. The card strips energy from opposing Pokémon, and Bulbapedia records that Japan banned it in 1999 for being overpowered — the first card banned there on power grounds. That ban was a Japanese tournament measure, not a worldwide one; the claim that it was banned everywhere is a misremembering that still circulates.

Keiji Kinebuchi, the 3D illustrator behind most early Trainer cards, handled the artwork; he died around 2002, so later appearances of his work are reprints rather than new commissions. Super Energy Removal was reprinted with the same illustration in Base Set 2 (108/130, 2000) and then succeeded by Super Energy Removal 2 (Aquapolis 134), whose Japanese original kept the old name while the English release appended the numeral. It also appeared in the Blackout theme product.

For collectors the card endures as a banned-card artefact and a Base Set completion piece rather than a chase card. 1st Edition copies are defined by the stamp, and buyers recognise thick and thin forms of its numeral, though that distinction is market convention rather than documented print-run fact. The historical weight — the first power ban in the game's history — is the story attached to the slab.

How Rare Is This Card?

Read this card by its grade split rather than by a headline population. 15.2% of PSA-graded copies reach PSA 10, 11.2% 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.

A 15.2% Gem Mint rate on a $96 raw copy against a PSA-10 price near $1,750 is unusually strong for a card that saw real play.

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 or misprint is catalogued for Super Energy Removal 79/102 in any printing, and specifically none is documented for the 1st Edition stamped print. Bulbapedia's “Error cards” page lists the Base Set's corrected and uncorrected errors card by card and does not include it; PSA's Pokémon Error Guide covers the 1999 Base Set and Shadowless runs without naming it; PokéBeach's error and misprint database holds no entry; and Elite Fourum's photo-documented English Base Set Master Misprint Guide, which catalogues repeating misprints with three or more known copies, omits it too.

Where those sources describe a Base Set error it belongs to a different card — Blastoise, Wartortle, Ninetales, Pikachu, Diglett and Water Energy. Isolated printer hickeys and ink spots have surfaced on individual copies over the years, but a one-off hickey is not a catalogued error, and none should be attributed to this card's 1st Edition printing.

What Makes This Card Collectible?

What puts Super Energy Removal in a collection is its history rather than its artwork or its numbers:

• The first card ever banned for power. Japan restricted it in 1999 once it proved able to strip far too much energy at once — a genuine first in the game’s history.
• A ban that never went worldwide. The restriction was a Japanese tournament measure only; English printings were never restricted, which is why it could return unchanged in Base Set 2.
• Succeeded by its own replacement. Wizards printed Super Energy Removal 2 in Aquapolis, adding the numeral in English only — in Japan the successor kept the original name.
• Kinebuchi's Trainer work. The set's CGI artist, whose reputation rests heavily on the Trainer and Energy cards.

The Electrode review covers another Kinebuchi card from the same set; the Base Set hub covers the rest.

The Artist: Keiji Kinebuchi

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

Caleb's Collector Verdict

Super Energy Removal is the Base Set Trainer with the strangest claim to fame: the first card the game ever banned for raw power, printed unchanged everywhere outside Japan, with a Gem Mint rate strong enough to make clean copies worth submitting.

People Also Ask

Is my 1st Edition Super Energy Removal 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?
The odds here are strong for a card that saw real play. A clean copy is worth submitting. 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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