Blaine's Growlithe · Gym Challenge, what to know.
About the Blaine's Growlithe card
Blaine's Growlithe sits at #62 in Gym Challenge, the seventh of the Wizards of the Coast print runs. Illustration by Ken Sugimori. Sugimori is the lead character designer of the Pokémon franchise itself. His TCG illustrations carry a tighter, more on-model feel because they are by the same hand that defined how the Pokémon look in the games.
Print variants and how to spot them
Gym Challenge shipped in 1st Edition (stamped) and Unlimited prints. The Gym sets use the trainer-prefix naming convention (Misty's Tentacruel, Blaine's Charizard, Sabrina's Gengar, and so on). No widely-recognized error prints.
Grading and condition
Commons grade most forgivingly of any tier in the set. Centering is the typical grade cap; the soft Wizards-era cardstock picks up edge whitening easily but the high print runs mean clean copies remain affordable. A first-time grading submission on a Common is the cheapest way to learn what each grading service is actually looking at.
If you are buying this card
Raw copies of this card are inexpensive enough that the grading math rarely justifies submission unless you have a clearly pack-fresh example. For set completionists, picking up a clean raw copy and sleeving it is the practical move.
