Verified Auction Sales · PSA Population Data · Updated Monthly · Editorial Policy
1999 Pokemon Base Set Charizard 4/102 holographic card

How Many Base Set Charizards Were Printed? What Wizards Actually Said

by

Nobody outside Wizards of the Coast can tell you how many Base Set Charizards were printed, because Wizards never published the number. Asked in its own customer chat in January 2000 whether it releases print-run statistics, Wizards replied that “we are not obligated to release that sort of information.” What is on the record is narrower: sales counted in copies of the game, the timing of the print runs, Charizard’s pull rate, and one printer’s memory of its first order. Built from those records, Pokemon Pricing’s own labelled estimate is about 3 million Unlimited Charizards, most likely between 2 million and 4.5 million; the method is in our Unlimited article, linked below.

As of October 6, 2026: Wizards, Hasbro, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company have released no card count for the 1999 English Base Set, any of its print waves, or Charizard 4/102. Wizards said Charizard was no rarer than any other Base Set holo, which works out to about one Charizard per 48 booster packs. Printing ran from the January 1999 launch to about the end of February 2000. The only hard counts are grading records, such as the 14,801 slabs of the Unlimited print (the common, mass-printed version) in CGC’s population report, and those count slabs, not cards printed.

How many Base Set Charizards were printed? What Wizards said

The clearest answer comes from Wizards itself, in a weekly customer help chat whose transcripts it posted on wizards.com. In the chat dated January 27, 2000, a collector asked: “Does WOTC release print run statistics? If not, why not (You are a publicly held company now?)” The reply: “Though we are a publicly held company, we are not obligated to release that sort of information.”

The publicly held parent was Hasbro, which acquired Wizards of the Coast on September 30, 1999. The policy held for later sets too, including their 1st Edition printings (the first print run, marked with a black stamp). One exchange in an April 2000 chat reads in full: “Approx., How many first edition Rocket items will be at stores, if any? No answer for you!”

PSA agrees. A 2016 PSA article on the 1st Edition set put it plainly: “No one knows the exact number of 1st Edition cards.” For how many Charizards survive today, see our hub on how many Base Set Charizards exist; this article sticks to the print-run evidence.

Everything Wizards, Hasbro and the printer actually said

These are the only first-hand statements about Base Set volume we could find, in date order. Not one is a card count.

Date Who What they said What it leaves out
August 27, 1998 Wizards press release It would produce “the base set in limited quantities” Any quantity; a pre-launch promise
February 3, 1999 Wizards release, Business Wire “nearly 400,000 copies of the game in less than six weeks”; already “gearing up for a fourth print run” The mix of starter sets, theme decks and packs
April 1999 Wizards media alert “over 850,000 copies of the game have been sold in North America” Cards; the unit is still copies
January 27, 2000 Wizards customer chat “not obligated to release that sort of information” Everything; the official non-answer
February 17, 2000 Wizards customer chat 1st Edition cards “are printed for 3 days only” Quantity; a duration, and no set named
March 8, 2000 Wizards release, Business Wire “millions of copies of the game have been sold in North America” Cards; still copies
Fiscal 2000 Hasbro annual report (10-K) Pokémon cards “contributed 15% of consolidated net revenues” Base Set; it is dollars for every Pokémon card product that year
February 1, 2006 PBM Graphics vice president The first order was “an initial run of a few hundred thousand sheets” Cards or holos; a recollection of the first run
End of March 2026 The Pokémon Company “Total production over 85 billion cards” Base Set; every Pokémon card ever, in 16 languages

Why game sales can’t become a card count

Wizards never defined a copy. Its launch announcement said the Starter Set would come first and “will be followed shortly by expert-level booster packs and preconstructed theme decks,” and the February 1999 release still described “The currently available Pokemon two-player Starter Set” with boosters to follow. Each Starter Set held “two 30-card decks, one holographic card,” a booster held 11 cards, and only boosters held Charizard. It isn’t even clear how many of the first 400,000 copies could have contained one, and without the product mix neither 400,000 nor 850,000 copies can be turned into cards.

Hasbro’s 15% covers every Pokémon card product sold in fiscal 2000, including Base Set 2, released in March 2000. The Pokémon Company’s 85 billion is lifetime production in 16 languages. Neither isolates the 1999 English Base Set.

Charizard’s print rate: one of 16 equally rare holos

Wizards was asked about Charizard by name. In the February 3, 2000 chat, a collector asked: “I mean out of a thousand cards printed, Charizards are printed?” The answer: “Charizard is no more rare than any other rare in the base set.” Wizards’ official FAQ said of the holos: “They are all equally rare, but depending on which ones are most popular, some might be harder to trade for.”

Base Set has 16 holo rares, numbered 1 to 16 on the Base Set checklist; PSA calls Charizard “one of the 16 holographic cards in the 1st Edition Series.” The pack configuration is on record too:

  • Pack size: “11 tradable game cards with a mix of common, uncommon, rare, and holographic Pokémon,” per Wizards’ booster page.
  • Holo rate: “When the cards are printed, the number of foils is 1 in 3 packs,” Wizards said. The booster page gives “approximately 1:33 cards,” the same rate at 11 cards a pack (3 × 11 = 33).
  • Pack contents: PSA, citing collector Scott Pratte, lists seven commons, three uncommons and one rare, with the rare a holo “in approximately one of every three packs.”
  • Box size: a sealed box described by the BBC in 2023 held “36 sealed booster packs.”
  • Where Charizard lived: Wizards’ FAQ says Charizard “is only found in booster packs,” so not in the Starter Set or the four theme decks (Overgrowth, Brushfire, Blackout and Zap!).

The arithmetic, and what it is not

One holo in every three packs, spread evenly over 16 equally rare holos, means any one holo turns up about once per 48 packs (3 × 16). Wizards’ compiled card FAQ gave the same figure without naming a set: “What’s the probability of getting any specific foil card in a booster pack? Roughly 1:48.” A 36-pack box therefore averages about 0.75 Charizards (36 ÷ 48), or three for every four boxes.

That is an average odds calculation, not a print count, and real boxes varied; Wizards said of the foil rate, “Some people get better odds, some get worse.” It can’t be multiplied up into a print run, because the number you would need, how many Base Set packs were printed, was never published. Any Charizard print total built from pull rates has had that number supplied by whoever built it.

The print waves, in order

Collectors split the 1999 English Base Set Charizard into four print waves. 1st Edition cards carry a stamp. Shadowless cards have no stamp and no drop shadow beside the art. Unlimited cards have the drop shadow. The 1999-2000 print, which collectors call the 4th print or UK print, has a later copyright date. Wizards gave no quantity for any of them.

Print wave Timing on the record How to identify it Quantity on record
1st Edition Launched January 9 and 10, 1999; Wizards later said 1st Edition was “printed for 3 days only” Black circular 1st Edition stamp below the lower-left of the art box; no drop shadow None. Wizards: “a limited quantity of each set of Pokémon cards is printed with the symbol”
Shadowless Early 1999; CGC calls it “the second limited print run of Base Set” No stamp; no drop shadow on the right edge of the art box; duller colours None
Unlimited 1999 to about the end of February 2000 (Wizards, January 2000: Base Set “will be printed up until Base Set 2 comes out”); out of print by March 23, 2000 Drop shadow; no stamp; 1999 copyright line None. PSA: “produced in much higher quantities”
1999-2000 print (4th print, UK print) Date and printer unconfirmed 1999-2000 copyright date; lighter colour; Vulpix’s HP corrected to read 50 HP None. Our labelled estimate is in how many 4th print Charizards were printed

Pratte told PSA the order: “Their price hierarchy echoes their release: 1st Edition being first, shadowless being second and unlimited being third.” CGC adds that “While Shadowless Pokémon cards were featured in both Limited Edition Base Set print runs, 1st Edition cards were only featured in one.” Wizards’ card FAQ explains the missing shadow: “That is how the cards were originally printed in Base set and then Nintendo asked us to make changes like adding the drop shadow.”

Even the 3-days-only answer has an exception. In a March 23, 2000 chat, Wizards confirmed: “Yes it is still a 1st edition Base set Machamp that comes in the Base Set 2 starter set.” CGC notes that the Machamps in the 2-Player CD-ROM Starter Kit “actually had the cosmos holofoil pattern that was used on later sets,” which suggests some 1st Edition Machamps were printed after the original run. CGC also recognises two Charizard sub-variants inside these waves: the Gray Stamp 1st Edition, with a stamp “much lighter than the normal black color,” and the Unlimited Black Dot Error, an ink spot over the t in Nintendo. Neither has a print figure. Prices for each wave are on our 1st Edition Charizard, Shadowless Charizard and Unlimited Charizard pages.

Why the 4th print is not the fourth print run

Collectors and auction houses both use the nickname; the 2023 BBC story was about a “Fourth Print Base Set Booster Box.” It can’t be the literal fourth press run. Wizards’ February 3, 1999 release, under four weeks after the national launch, said the company was already “gearing up for a fourth print run after only six weeks on the market.” A card dated 1999-2000 came later than that.

In March 2000 Wizards also said “Cards with the 99 copyright are just cards from the first few print runs,” which fits: the 1999-2000 date belongs to later runs (the answer named no set, so treat it as support only). The total number of runs is unknown; Pratte told PSA “I believe around seven in total” for Unlimited, a belief rather than a record. Read 4th print as the fourth version collectors can tell apart, not a press-run count.

Who printed Base Set Charizards

Only one English Base Set printer is confirmed first-hand: PBM Graphics of North Carolina. A 2006 Printing Impressions profile says Wizards “tabbed the printer in 1998 for a product called Xena Warriors” and then “asked PBM if it had enough capacity to produce a new set of game cards it was introducing to the market.” That set was Pokémon. Rick Jones, PBM’s vice president of national accounts, recalled: “It was an overnight success that went from an initial run of a few hundred thousand sheets to a three-year phenomenon of printing them day in and day out.”

A 2008 trade report called PBM “the largest producer of Pokémon cards in the world,” and a 2006 WRAL report says: “Hundreds of millions of cards, 121 to the sheet, come off high-tech presses each year.”

Why PBM’s two sheet figures can’t be multiplied

Multiplying 121 cards a sheet by a few hundred thousand sheets gives a tidy total, and it is wrong:

  • The WRAL figure describes PBM’s whole card output in 2006, when it also printed Star Wars and Star Trek cards. Nothing says 1999 Pokémon sheets used that layout.
  • The few-hundred-thousand figure is a recollection given years later, covering the first run only, and nobody said what that run contained.
  • Printing then went on for three years, and none of the later runs was ever quantified.

The 1999-2000 print’s printer is unconfirmed. Collector forums name a printer and a print date, but neither appears in any company, trade-press or news source we could find, and claims that Belgium’s Carta Mundi printed English Base Set are equally unsourced. CGC confirms only that the print “was a variant that was issued for the UK market.”

Print-run numbers you will see online, and why they don’t hold up

Each figure below was traced as far back as it goes. None reaches a Wizards document or a named person with first-hand knowledge.

Under 10,000 of each 1st Edition card

The earliest citable appearance is the 2016 PSA article above: “it’s been estimated that less 10,000 of each card was produced,” with no estimator named. A May 2024 Fanatics Collect lot repeats it: “It’s believed the initial print run was limited to 10,000 copies of each card, though that number has never been confirmed.”

Ten Unlimited cards for every 1st Edition card

A 2023 Fanatics Collect lot for a PSA 9 1st Edition Charizard says it was “Said to have been made with only a ten-to-one print run of unlimited to 1st Edition copies.” Said by whom is never stated. The closest first-hand statement is Wizards’ three-days answer, which gives time, not quantity, and which the staffer ended with “so whatever 3 into infinity is.”

Unlimited in the tens or hundreds of millions

These come from forum threads that build a print run from assumed box counts, sheet sizes and pull rates. Every one depends on a pack or sheet count Wizards never released; Wizards said only “millions of copies of the game.” Our article on the Unlimited Charizard print covers that wave on its own.

400,000 packs in six weeks

A 2011 Kotaku retrospective says “over 400,000 packs of Pokémon cards were sold in just the property’s first six weeks on sale in the US.” Wizards said copies of the game, not packs. Kotaku’s next claim, “By the end of that year over one million packs of Pokémon cards had been sold,” has no source, and if copies and packs were the same thing it would barely exceed Wizards’ April 1999 figure of “over 850,000 copies of the game.”

Fifty million cards by March 1999

This appears on a French fan wiki. We found no Wizards release or 1999 news report that carries it.

Close to 100 million cards by September 1999

This is real reporting: the Christian Science Monitor wrote on September 10, 1999 that “close to 100 million cards have found their way into American classrooms and summer camps.” It names no source and covers every Pokémon card, not Base Set alone; Wizards’ card FAQ dates the Jungle expansion to summer 1999. Treat it as an unattributed newspaper estimate.

Half a billion to a billion Unlimited cards

Ranges like half a billion to a billion Unlimited cards, or five to ten million Unlimited Charizards, have appeared on price-guide and blog pages, sometimes labelled community estimates. No community source is named, and none traces to anything Wizards, Hasbro or PBM said. The objection is the missing source, not the size: our own labelled estimate, built step by step from Hasbro’s filings, comes to about 103 million Unlimited Base Set packs, which is over a billion cards, and about 3 million Unlimited Charizards. The five to ten million Charizard figure sits above even our high case.

What the graded population does tell you

Graded populations are real counts, but of slabs, not of cards printed. Full tables are in our Base Set Charizard population report; three figures show the scale. PSA’s CardFacts page, in a May 2026 Internet Archive capture, listed 5,436 1st Edition Charizards graded (5,390 with a numeric grade plus 46 Authentic). A Goldin lot read on October 6, 2026 cited “more than 105,365 examples of this piece recorded in PSA’s census reporting” for the Unlimited card. CGC’s population report, read the same day, showed 14,801 Unlimited Charizards, plus 60 on a separate 1999-2000 line.

Those numbers can’t be turned back into a print run. PSA says “the pop isn’t 100% perfect” because collectors “crack out their cards to have them signed, resubmit, or sell raw,” and the count stands unless the label comes back. A card crossed between graders can sit in two reports, and raw cards are not counted at all. CGC’s disclaimer says population reports “are not an indicator of value or rarity.” Nobody knows what share of the print was ever graded, so a graded count tells you how many slabs exist, not how many cards were printed.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many 1st Edition Base Set Charizards were printed?

Nobody outside Wizards knows, because Wizards never published 1st Edition quantities. A Wizards staffer said in February 2000 that 1st Edition cards were “printed for 3 days only,” which is a length of time, not a count. The widely repeated figure of under 10,000 of each card goes back to an unattributed estimate in a 2016 PSA article.

How many Charizards are in a Base Set booster box?

About 0.75 on average. Wizards put holo foils at 1 in 3 packs and said all 16 Base Set holos were equally rare, which works out to roughly one Charizard per 48 packs, and a box held 36 packs. Individual boxes vary; Wizards itself said of the foil rate, “Some people get better odds, some get worse.”

Was Charizard rarer than the other Base Set holos?

No. Asked directly in a February 2000 chat, Wizards said “Charizard is no more rare than any other rare in the base set.” Charizard costs more than the other holos because more collectors want it, not because fewer were printed.

Did Wizards of the Coast ever release Base Set print run numbers?

No. In its January 27, 2000 customer chat Wizards said “we are not obligated to release that sort of information,” and its press releases gave only copies of the game sold, never card counts. Hasbro, which bought Wizards in 1999, reported Pokémon cards only as 15% of its 2000 revenue.

How many print runs did Base Set have?

The total is unknown. Wizards was already preparing a fourth print run by February 3, 1999, and Base Set printing continued until about the end of February 2000. Collector Scott Pratte told PSA he believes Unlimited had around seven print runs, but that is his opinion, not a Wizards record.

Is the 4th print Charizard from the fourth print run?

Almost certainly not. The nickname refers to the version with a 1999-2000 copyright date, issued for the UK market. Wizards was already preparing its fourth print run in early February 1999, months before a card could carry a 1999-2000 copyright line.

How many Pokémon cards have ever been printed?

The Pokémon Company lists “Total production over 85 billion cards” as of the end of March 2026. That covers every Pokémon card in 16 languages since the game began in Japan, so it says nothing about Base Set or Charizard on its own.

Sources

Population figures are snapshots of each grading company’s public report on the date shown and change every week as new cards are graded. Print-run figures for the 1999 English Base Set were never published by Wizards of the Coast; anything described here as an estimate is labelled as one. This article is collector information, not investment advice. Pokémon and Charizard are trademarks of Nintendo, Creatures Inc. and GAME FREAK inc.; Pokemon Pricing is not affiliated with them or with any grading company.

Owed money from a settlement? Check what is open at OpenClassActions.com. Caring for someone with dementia? Find practical guides at HelpDementia.com. Working out a skin routine? Evidence-based answers at AcneAdvocate.com. Forgot the name of a movie? Identify it at FindThisMovie.com. Was your data exposed? Track active breaches at DataBreachRadar.com.

We use cookies to run this site, measure how it’s used, and show ads. Choose “Essentials only” to limit cookies to what the site needs to work. Privacy Policy. Cookie Policy.