Spearow

Spearow sits at #62 in Jungle, the second 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: "Eats bugs in grassy areas. It has to flap its short wings at high speeds to stay airborne." 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.

A small angry brown bird with red plumage. The first wild Pokémon Ash encounters in the anime, which becomes a defining sequence. Common Base Set card. Quietly collectible because of its anime significance.

Jungle shipped in two print waves: 1st Edition (stamped) and Unlimited. There is also a famous "No Symbol" error on some early Unlimited prints where the set symbol was accidentally left off the artwork. No Symbol variants trade for a meaningful premium over the standard Unlimited print and are a quiet specialty within Jungle collecting.

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.