Skarmory - my answer to the first question is my favorite Pokemon, Dewgong, who has never received a chase card despite being a gen 1 Pokemon.
Here's my pitch - Lorelei's Dewgong illustration rare or special illustration rare. Lorelei's Dewgong is first Elite Four match of the series and it's a somewhat infamous fight because of RBY's mechanics. If you can't kill Lorelei's Dewgong within a Rest cycle it's just going to keep using Rest infinitely because the AI in Gen 1 doesn't have PP. Unfortunately I found myself stuck in endless battles against it a couple times while grinding to complete the Pokedex as an adult.
Lorelei, despite being the first Elite Four member, also has received very little love in the TCG - she has one tag team Supporter shared with Misty and we never even got the full art outside of Japan.
As for the second question, I think I joined the forums officially in 2010 but I've checked Pokebeach regularly since pretty much the beginning. I'm just about the same age as Jon and was working on Psypoke around the same time as Pokebeach launched. I definitely remember using the old Pokebeach card scans as a reference to transcribe all the attacks and Pokemon Power/Bodies etc for Psypoke.