What Happened to Pokemon Base Set 3 & Other Unreleased TCG Sets?

PokePatch Pokemon TCG base set 3 and unreleased wotc sets

Unreleased Pokemon TCG Sets

The Base Set was the first English set ever created in the Pokemon TCG in 1999. Most English sets from this time consisted of cards made for Japanese sets years prior. The English Base Set 2 came out just a year later in 2000. Sadly we never saw the release of a Base Set 3 set but there’s evidence that it was in development along with many other unreleased sets. So why did we never see these unreleased Pokemon cards release and what did they look like?

Jamboree

Lapras southern islands
Lapras from Southern Islands

This set was supposed to feature all completely new cards made by WOTC. Rumor has it that these cards were going to have a cute aesthetic to them. Knowing this, it would likely look similar to Southern Islands which was another set packaged by Wizards of the Coast that had a cutesy art style. The Pokemon Company seemingly didn’t agree with this and didn’t want WOTC making their own sets of Pokemon cards because they cut relations with WOTC soon after this.

This could’ve been one of the reasons why The Pokemon Company stopped their partnership with WOTC and caused a lawsuit between the companies in 2003. It’s thought that they wanted more control over the production of Pokemon cards in the West. Sadly, we’ve never seen art of these unreleased cards. With it being almost 20 years since WOTC stopped making Pokemon cards, if there was art created for these sets we probably would’ve seen it by now. We can only speculate what the cards would look like.

Base Set 3

Articuno fossil
Articuno from Fossil

A Base Set 3 would likely feature iconic Base Set cards such as Charizard while adding new Pokemon that wasn’t in Base Set 1. This is similar to what Base Set 2 did with the Jungle cards Scyther, Pigeot, and others. We could’ve seen Fossil and Team Rocket holo cards in Base Set 3 such as Articuno, Dark Dragonite, and Lapras. According to Bulbagarden, another name for Base Set 3 was CrossTrainer and it was supposed to feature all Pokemon at the time from Bulbasaur (1) to Mew (151).

Legendary Collection 2

Alakazam Legendary Collection
Alakazam from Legendary Collection

The first Legendary Collection set consisted of fan favorite cards from all previous WOTC sets and added special holographic and reverse holo designs to them. A second Legendary Collection set would’ve surely kept this same holographic design and added it to different cards that didn’t get this treatment the first time around.

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