After at least 20 years, I finally found it!
Back in 2000, I was at a cards and comics shop with my mom. I saw this Charizard in the glass case for $50. I asked her if that was something I could have for my 5th birthday. It was quite an exciting birthday present as you can imagine.
Well, fast forward some years, and Pokemon became “uncool”, so my collection sat in a box somewhere (not in toploaders or sleeves 😂). Around 10 years ago now, I saw some crazy numbers being thrown around for a base set Charizard, and immediately called my dad to tell him to keep an eye out for my old collection, because this was in it. He searched the attic, and I went to his house a few times to look around for it, but could never seem to find it. Just a few weeks ago, he sent me a picture of a ziploc sandwich bag with some loose cards in it, and I didn’t really think too much of it, as we had already had some false alarms with other cards of my little brothers being found here and there over the years.
This week, I was at his house for dinner, and my nephew found the ziploc bag and asked if he could play with my Pokemon cards. I said “of course” and he went off to the living room to get them out. My girlfriend joked and said “what if that Charizard is in there?” I thought there was an extremely slim chance, but thought “well I might as well check just in case”. I went into the living room with my nephew, and pulled the stack of cards out of the bag, and THIS was the second card I flipped over. I was ecstatic. I immediately called my dad over and showed him, and we celebrated for a bit. I took the few holo cards from the bag and put them in a safe place until it was time to leave. Once I got home to examine them, I had a wild realization that this base set Charizard was shadowless. Nuts!
The Charizard unfortunately isn’t in the greatest condition, it has some pretty significant edge wear, and a relatively large bend crease on the back, but it’s still so cool and nostalgic to look at it after years of searching.
This is by far the craziest Pokemon TCG story I have to share in my lifetime, so I figured I would share it here for anyone interested enough to read about it!