Today at the official Pokemon Presents event there was the major announcement that a legacy re-printing of the original TCG base set is coming calledPokemon Trading Card Game Classic. This announcement comes as part of a string ofmajor announcements for Pokemon Day, the day the original gamesPokemon Red and Greencame out in Japan.
Pokemon Trading Card Game Classicis supposed to be a “premium Pokemon TCG set that will last a lifetime” says Tsunekazu Ishihara, president and CEO of The Pokemon Company. A stylish trailer accompanied the announcement showcasing the original Venusaur, Charizard, and Blastoise cards along with sleek-looking sleeves and a playmat.
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There is not too much else known about the base set re-release as of this time. There is supposed to be a webpage setup with more details about the set but as of writing this, that page is currently down. There have been re-printings of base set cards in the past, but this may be the first re-print containing the entire original 102 cards in the set. Hopefully, there will be confirmation for this soon. The informational card at the end of the trailer states that none of the cards will be usable in official tournament play aside from the base energy cards.
Having these original base set cards again is fantastic, and the preview makes them look as clean as ever, but there is some skepticism that comes along with a vintage release of this nature right now. A lot of this stems from the recent Wizards of the Coast controversy that came with its own vintage set in late 2022,theMagic: The Gathering30th Anniversary packs. Of course, fans ofPokemon TCGwould love to have the original cards again, even if they mostly aren’t usable in official competitions, but if the idea is random booster packs at a price point many consider unreasonably high then this base set re-printing may see a similar uproar.
Undoubtedly, any vintage set will be highly sought after by collectors and more notoriously,scalpers. It’s up to The Pokemon Company to ensure the supply of this product will meet what is certainly going to be an extremely high demand so that scalpers can’t so easily take advantage of this release. However, considering the classy design that can be seen in the preview trailer, along with Ishihara’s words that this is a “premium set,” it feels out of the gate as though the intention behindPokemon Trading Card Game Classicis for it to be something of a limited-run collector’s set. This could be disproved as more information about the re-print begins to trickle out, though.
Pokemon Trading Card Game Classicdoesn’t have an official release date set as of right now, but there will be a sneak peek of the product, as well as presumably more details, atthe Pokemon World Championships in August.
