Super Potion 1st Edition Base Set: The Smudged Stamp
Reviewed by Caleb Stapel · Collector · Updated September 2026
Super Potion is an early Trainer interesting for reasons beyond its effect: it appeared in the first Japanese Expansion Pack and the pre-release Trainer Deck A, carried Keiji Kinebuchi’s LightWave 3D art, became the anime’s most-used potion, and was reprinted repeatedly. Its 1st Edition stamp is now the draw, with thick, thin, grey and smudged copies all chased. Raw NM runs about $18, while a PSA 10 reaches $568.
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 Super Potion printings you own, the 3-second test below settles it before you read any further.
| Grade | Market Price | Share of graded copies |
|---|---|---|
| Ungraded (raw) | $18 | — |
| PSA 7 (NM) | $35 | 8.7% |
| PSA 8 (NM-MT) | $41 | 18.4% |
| PSA 9 (Mint) | $134 | 47.1% |
| PSA 10 (Gem Mint) | $568 | 17.4% |
| Grade 6 or below | — | 8.3% |
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 Super Potion
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 Super Potion” 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.
Super Potion is an Trainer, illustrated by Keiji Kinebuchi. Inspect the 1st Edition stamp first — its position left of the artwork and whether it reads solid black, thin, grey or smudged — then confirm the card sits on the shadowless template with no drop shadow behind the art box.
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
Super Potion is one of the quiet cards that was there at the very beginning. It appeared in the Japanese Expansion Pack before the English Base Set reached North America, and it circulated in the prototype Trainer Deck A — a red-bordered league deck, labelled on the back, handed out before the game officially launched. The English 90/102 printing followed in 1999, an Uncommon Trainer illustrated by Keiji Kinebuchi, the 3D artist who built his images in LightWave and shaped the look of nearly every early Trainer card, plus the Basic Energy layouts that appeared in every deck. It was reprinted in Base Set 2 as 117/130, and its Japanese home was the Kuchiba City Gym deck. Its real fame, though, is off the tabletop: the Super Potion is the potion most often used in the animated series, regularly healing Pokémon through the Original Series era.
When the TCG became a video game, Super Potion travelled with it, appearing in the Game Boy Pokémon Trading Card Game and its sequel. Later, the card was reborn twice over: as an Item in the XY expansion with new art by 5ban Graphics and a reworked effect, then as a retro reprint in Evolutions (87/108) that reused Kinebuchi’s original artwork on an updated frame, and again in Journey Together with art by Studio Bora Inc. The 1st Edition stamp — a black circle-and-1 left of the art — is where the collecting story now lives, and it is a story of ink that did not dry.
How Rare Is This Card?
Start with the number that describes the whole card: roughly 1,090 graded copies exist in total, and ~190 of those are PSA 10s. That is a gem rate of about 17.4% — 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.
| Card | PSA 10s | Total graded | Gem rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Super Potion 1st Edition (1999) | ~190 | ~1,090 | ~17.4% |
| 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.
Super Potion has a deep graded population and a gem rate near a quarter, ordinary for a handled 1999 Trainer.
Its collecting interest lives in the stamp variants rather than in the population: thick, thin, grey and smudged examples are the real sub-market.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
The 1st Edition printing is where Super Potion’s documented quirks live, and they are stamp errors rather than card errors. Bulbapedia’s error page records that Base Set non-holo cards — Trainers most of all — can carry a smudged, thick or incomplete 1st Edition stamp, an artefact of wet ink at the stamping stage. The Elite Fourum Base Set Master Misprint Guide catalogues the same family as Grey 1st Edition stamps, White stamps, black and white back-imprinted stamps, and Thin non-holo stamps; the forum’s 1st Edition Thin list names Super Potion among the cards seen with the thin stamp. Grey-stamped 1st Edition Super Potions appear in graded sales. PSA’s Pokémon Error Guide and PokeBeach’s misprint database list no Super Potion-specific defect, and the Unlimited-only error list — Blastoise, Wartortle, Diglett, Vulpix — does not include it.
What Makes This Card Collectible?
Three things drive Super Potion collecting at the 1st Edition level.
- Stamp variant. A thick, thin, grey or smudged 1st Edition stamp is the single most-collected difference among Super Potion copies.
- Printing run. 1st Edition carries the Edition-1 stamp and shadowless template; Shadowless drops the stamp, Unlimited adds a drop shadow, and the 1999-2000 print changes the copyright.
- Trainer art era. Kinebuchi’s LightWave bottle is a precisely dated piece of early computer-generated card art.
None of it is expensive, which is exactly why the stamp variants get hunted so hard.
The Artist: Keiji Kinebuchi
Keiji Kinebuchi is one of the illustrators who defined the look of the original English Pokémon TCG, and Super Potion is one of their Base Set contributions. This section will carry their full numbers when the artist guide lands.
Caleb's Collector Verdict
Super Potion is a cheap card with an unusually deep collecting tail for a non-holo Uncommon.
People Also Ask
Is my 1st Edition Super Potion 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 for the gem chase. A raw NM 1st Edition runs about $18, while a PSA 10 reaches $568, a multiple that only pays off on a flawless copy. The gem rate is low — roughly 626 gem-mint copies among about 2,651 graded by PSA and SGC, near 24% — so most submissions will not clear the top grade.