Squirtle Squad
Long before a single Base Set booster reached an American shelf, the most famous Blastoise in the hobby was not a tournament staple or a shiny chase card. It was a prototype — a handful of cards printed in 1998 to prove a point, then nearly lost to history. Decades later, one of them sold for $360,000, and the small family of surviving test prints now ranks among the rarest and most valuable Pokémon cards ever made. This is the story of how a corporate sales pitch became a collecting legend.
Why Wizards of the Coast Printed a Prototype Blastoise
Pokémon did not arrive in English as a sure thing. In the late 1990s, Wizards of the Coast — then best known for Magic: The Gathering — wanted to license and print the Pokémon Trading Card Game for the Western market. To do that, the company needed Nintendo's blessing, and a pitch on paper was not going to be enough.
So Wizards commissioned physical sample cards to demonstrate what an English-language Pokémon card would actually look like in hand. Blastoise, with its dramatic Ken Sugimori artwork and full-art holofoil, was the natural showpiece. According to [CGC Trading Cards](https://www.cgccards.com/news/article/8744/pokemon-test-print-blastoise/), these prints were created in mid-1998 as presentation and test pieces, produced on the printing infrastructure Wizards already had running for Magic.
That last detail is where the story gets strange and wonderful.
The Cards That Wore a Magic: The Gathering Back
Because these Blastoise cards were run through Wizards' existing Magic production line, several of the surviving test prints have a genuine Magic: The Gathering card back instead of the familiar blue Pokémon back. Flip one over and you see the ornate brown Magic reverse — a physical fingerprint of the exact moment two of the biggest names in trading cards briefly shared a printing press.
These are usually described with a distinctive gold border foil treatment, marking them as pre-production rather than retail. They are unmistakably prototypes, and collectors prize them precisely because the mismatched back tells the whole origin story at a glance. CGC has authenticated only a small handful of these Magic-backed Blastoise test prints — early counts put the number at around four, with a few more surfacing in later years as consignors came forward.
If you want to see how the finished, retail Blastoise eventually turned out once it reached shelves, our [Base Set Blastoise retrospective](/blog/base-set-blastoise-30th-celebration-snub) covers the card most fans actually grew up chasing.
The Blank-Back "Commissioned Presentation" Card
One card in this family stands apart from the Magic-backed prints: the Blastoise Commissioned Presentation Galaxy Star Hologram, catalogued as #009/165R. Instead of a Magic back, it has a completely blank back — a clean, finished-looking sample meant to represent the front face of a real Pokémon card without any distracting reverse.
Per Heritage Auctions and CGC, only two of this blank-back presentation version are believed to have been produced, and the whereabouts of the second copy remain unknown. That makes the surviving, graded example effectively a one-of-one on the open market. The front features the same galaxy-pattern star holofoil and Sugimori art, but the pristine blank reverse is what signals its role as the "here is what we want to sell" pitch piece.
Why the blank back matters so much: it is the difference between an internal test artifact and a polished presentation prop. The Magic-backed cards show how Wizards printed the samples; the blank-back card shows what they were trying to sell Nintendo on. Collectors treat it as the closest thing to a Pokémon "patient zero."
The $360,000 Sale That Made It Famous
The blank-back Commissioned Presentation Blastoise, graded CGC 8.5, crossed the block at a Heritage Auctions live sale on January 14, 2021, and realized $360,000. As [CGC reported](https://www.cgccomics.com/news/article/8832/pokemon-blastoise-auction-record/), the result tied it among the highest prices ever paid at auction for an English-language Pokémon card at the time.
The Magic-backed gold-border test prints have posted their own eye-watering numbers. Heritage sold one graded CGC 6.5 for roughly $216,000 in late 2021, and another example in the mid-CGC range brought about $162,000 in a later sale. Even as the broader vintage market cooled, a Magic-backed prototype Blastoise with lower authentication grade still changed hands for tens of thousands of dollars in 2026 — a floor most retail cards never approach.
A quick reality check on those figures: auction results swing with the market, the specific grade, and how many bidders show up on a given night. Treat any single sale as a data point, not a fixed valuation. Prototype prices in particular are thin and volatile because so few cards exist to establish a pattern.
What This Means for Regular Collectors
The odds that you will ever own a 1998 test print are, realistically, near zero — and that is fine. The value of this story for an everyday Squirtle-line fan is what it teaches about provenance, scarcity, and grading.
Provenance is everything at the top of the market. These cards are worth six figures not because they are prettier than a retail holo, but because their history is documented and singular. When you evaluate any expensive card, ask what makes it verifiable and unique, not just rare-sounding.
Third-party grading unlocks trust. None of these prototypes would command their prices unsigned and unslabbed. Authentication is what turns "some old Blastoise with a weird back" into a certified artifact. If you are starting to protect your own better cards, a proper submission — and good storage in the meantime — is the first step. It is worth reading our [guide to graded Squirtle-line cards](/blog/graded-squirtle-cards-investment-guide) before you spend a dollar on slabbing.
Condition compounds value. The gap between a CGC 6.5 and an 8.5 on these prints is measured in six figures. On your own collection, that same principle scales down but never disappears — clean centering and sharp corners always matter.
For a look at the other Blastoise cards that command real money without being one-of-a-kind unicorns, our roundup of the [most valuable Blastoise cards of all time](/blog/most-valuable-blastoise-cards-all-time) is a more practical place to build a want-list.
Protecting and Displaying Your Own Blastoise Cards
You may never hold a prototype, but the habits that preserve a $360,000 card are the same ones that keep a beloved Base Set holo crisp. Start with archival-safe storage: a good [card binder with side-loading pages on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=pokemon+card+binder+side+loading&tag=squirtlesquad0d-20) keeps holos flat and away from dust without the slip-out risk of top-loading pockets.
For your standout cards, rigid protection matters more than a sleeve alone. A set of [semi-rigid card holders and toploaders on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=semi+rigid+card+holders+toploaders&tag=squirtlesquad0d-20) is exactly what most people use to ship cards safely to a grader, and they double as everyday armor for your best pulls. And if you want to actually enjoy a favorite Blastoise on a shelf rather than buried in a box, a [UV-protective card display case on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=graded+card+display+case+uv&tag=squirtlesquad0d-20) shields the ink from fading while keeping the art in view.
Collectors chasing a modern showpiece rather than a vintage relic can also look at a current-era [Blastoise ex card on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=blastoise+ex+pokemon+card&tag=squirtlesquad0d-20), which delivers the same commanding turtle energy at a price that will not require a second mortgage.
Disclosure: This post contains Amazon affiliate links, and purchases made through them may earn us a small commission at no extra cost to you. It helps keep this fan site running.
The Legacy of a Sales Pitch
The 1998 Blastoise test prints exist because a company had to prove that Pokémon cards could work in English. The pitch obviously succeeded — the game went on to become the best-selling trading card franchise on the planet. But the props from that meeting outlived the moment in a way nobody planned, becoming physical proof of the exact instant Pokémon and Magic shared a printing press and a future got decided.
That is the quiet magic of collecting the Squirtle line: even its rarest, most expensive corner is not really about money. It is about holding onto the strange, specific history of how a blue turtle became a global icon — starting with a blank-backed card that almost nobody was ever supposed to see.