Release date: 2002
Price: $70
Part of a series of deck boxes that had this really cool sketch-style artwork on the front by Mitsuhiro Arita, with the Steelix boxes as part of the 2002 lineup. It also features a Steelix silhouette on the back, alongside Steelix’s Pokédex number. The box also lists Steelix’s level which is pretty neat.
Mitsuhiro Arita is also the illustrator for a bunch of famous PTCG artwork, most notably the base set Charizard, a bunch of the Tag Team era cards, and a surprising amount of secret rares and SIRs. He also designed the original 7 energy symbols for the PTCG, he’s got a crazy résumé. He has a gallery on his website showing all the cards he illustrated if you want to take a look. Surprisingly, even after illustrating nearly 700 cards over the span of the PTCG, he hasn’t illustrated a Steelix card… yet.
It doesn’t seem like there are too many of these floating around, I bought this one the second I found the listing and I’ve only seen another one go up for sale since then.
