Kangaskhan · Base Set 2, what to know.
About the Kangaskhan card
Kangaskhan sits at #26 in Base Set 2, the fourth of the Wizards of the Coast print runs. Illustration by Mitsuhiro Arita. Arita was the original Pokémon TCG illustrator and the artist behind the Base Set Charizard. His vintage-era art has a painterly quality that distinguishes it from the cleaner reference-style work of the Sugimori cards.
The flavor text on the card reads: "The infant rarely ventures out of its mother's protective pouch until it is three years old." Pokédex entries from this era are short and often quirky, written by the original Japanese localization team for a specific stat-block layout that no longer exists in modern cards.
About Kangaskhan in the Pokémon world
A parent Pokémon with a baby in its pouch. Famously the parent half of the Mr. Mime father-trade glitch in the games. Jungle holo Kangaskhan has steady collector demand. The famous Family Event holo Kangaskhan (1998) is a separate and much rarer card.
Print variants and how to spot them
Base Set 2 shipped in a single Unlimited print run. No 1st Edition stamp, no Shadowless treatment, no error prints of note. The Base Set 2 set symbol (a small "2" inside the Base mark) is the diagnostic. Holos from this set carry significantly lower prices than the original Base Set equivalents despite being the same card art.
Grading and condition
For graded buyers, non-holo Rares are less punishing on surface but no easier on centering. PSA 10 populations for Wizards-era Rares are smaller than the Rare Holo populations in some cases because the cards were less protected and more frequently played. Edge whitening from sleeves is the typical grade-cap on raw copies.
If you are buying this card
For raw purchases of this card, verify centering by eye, edge whitening on all four sides, and surface scratches under angled light. Non-holo Rares from the Wizards era are cheap enough that PSA 10 submissions usually do not break the math if you have a clean candidate.
