Pikachu

Pikachu sits at #70 in Neo Genesis, the eighth of the Wizards of the Coast print runs. Illustration by Naoyo Kimura.

The flavor text on the card reads: "It raises its tail to check its surroundings. The tail is sometimes struck by lightning in this pose." 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.

The franchise mascot. An Electric-type rodent with red cheeks, a lightning-bolt tail, and a vocabulary limited to its own name in the anime. The most-printed Pokémon card in history. The Base Set print has a famous yellow-cheeks variant that commands a premium over the standard red-cheeks 1st Edition.

Neo Genesis shipped in 1st Edition (stamped) and Unlimited prints. The 1st Edition stamp convention is identical to earlier Wizards sets. No Shadowless variant exists for the Neo era and no widely-recognized error prints.

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.

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.