Hello all! As I’ve been focusing more and more on Yu-Gi-Oh! recently I figured I would make a collection thread to show you all what I’ve been collecting. I love talking about Yugioh in any capacity so feel free to share your thoughts on my collection or if you just want to talk about Yugioh in general, feel free to send me a message! Also, if you’re not that familiar with Yugioh I will try to make this thread as Yugioh-noob friendly as possible. Regardless, thank you for checking out my collection. 
Preamble:
I’ve been into Yugioh since it came out in the United States in 2002. I think I would have been 7 when I first saw it on TV. Just like with Pokemon, I was hooked instantly. I loved the high stakes battles and the amount of different cards and strategies the characters would use to overcome their opponents. Just like with Pokemon, there isn’t just one aspect of the franchise that I am involved with. I love the anime, as well as it’s spin-offs. I currently play the card game via the official online simulator “Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel” and have been for almost two years. I own the manga and have read it several times (more details on that later). And finally I collect the cards. I unfortunately do not have many of the cards from my childhood and if I did I’m sure they would be beat to hell from me playing with them so much. I have spent pretty much every point of my life enjoying Yugioh and I’m excited to share my enthusiasm for it with you all!
Manga
For those who are unaware, the Yugioh anime was actually based off a manga created by the late great Kazuki Takahashi which began serialization in Japan’s Weekly Shonen Jump in 1996. This is the same magazine that ran series like Dragon Ball, My Hero Academia and Jujutsu Kaisen.
I didn’t know this until I was about 13 years old when a friend and I were looking through our FYE (entertainment store) where I found these two volumes waiting for me on a small anime shelf in the back of the store
My favorite show has it’s own comic book!? And for some reason it’s backwards?? I had $20 on me so I of course purchased both volumes and spent the rest of my day looking at them.
What a good couple of volumes to start with too! These two volumes contain the final duel between Yugi and Kaiba during the Battle City finals.
Later on I did some research and found out that not only was the anime based off a manga but that the anime completely omitted the first seven volumes.You might be surprised to learn that the series wasn’t always centered around card games. It actually had a “game of the week” type of structure where Yugi would challenge neighborhood bullies to games of darkness (or shadow games as they called it in the English dub) where the loser would suffer a penalty game and receive a punishment that fit the crime they committed. These punishments range from having their vision changed to only see in mosaic patterns, being put into a months long coma or my personal favorite, being set on fire.
The Duel Monsters card game showed up a couple times in these volumes as a game called “Magic and Wizards” which was an obvious parody of Magic the Gathering.
The game was popular with fans so when the author decided to focus on one game for the sake of the story he went with Duel Monsters. These seven volumes had a lot of character development and important story beats that the anime just kind of forced into the Duelist Kingdom arc. If you’re interested in reading it, the Shonen Jump app has all of the manga and it’s only $3 a month for the subscription. (I’m not paid by or affiliated with Shonen Jump).
The manga is contained in 38 volumes. In the English version they are split up into three sections Yu-Gi-Oh!, Yu-Gi-Oh!: Duelist and Yu-Gi-Oh!: Millennium World. The Japanese version of the manga doesn’t do this as it is just volumes 1-38. I’ve owned all of these books for the last 16 years.
I also have Yu-Gi-Oh! R which was a small side story that came out years after the series ended. It is not written or illustrated by the original creator. It is also not very good.
I also have the Yu-Gi-OH! GX manga. This story is pretty decent and is drastically different from the anime
There are manga for the other spin-off series as well. I’ll get them eventually but they’re not a priority. Especially since I can read them online through the Shonen Jump app
Binder Collection
I put this binder together last year when Konami (the company who makes the tcg) rereleased the first four and tenth sets. I opened one of each box then decided to get all of the Super Rares, Ultra Rares and Secret Rares from each set and put them in a binder. For those unaware of how rarity works in these sets, here is a small explanation that pertains to these sets specifically
Rarity Guide
Rare = Cards name will be holographic with silver lettering (not pictured in binders). - One in every pack
Super Rare = Card artwork is holographic - 10 in every set, 4 in every box
Ultra Rare = Card artwork is holographic, name is holographic with gold lettering. - 10 in every set, two in every box
Secret Rare = Card artwork and name both have a glittery pattern - 2 in every set, 1 in every box
The sets are as follows in order:
Legend of the Blue-Eyes White Dragon:
Metal Raiders:
Spell Ruler:
Pharaonic Servant:
Invasion of Chaos:
The cards go in order of set and set number
This last page also features some cards I pulled from a legendary collection box
The rest of my binder is filled with cards that came as a deck from the recently released English version of the Ultimate Kaiba Briefcase. I have more pictures of that in my Miscellaneous section. This deck is filled with the various cards that the character Kaiba used throughout the anime and manga. Each card was printed in the Ultra Rare rarity. Many of these cards never received a release in this rarity and are exclusive to this set. The only card that isn’t an Ultra Rare is the first Blue-Eyes White Dragon which is in the new Quarter Century Secret Rare. The cards, I believe, were printed in Japan and are on their higher quality cardstock.
That Obelisk the Tormentor at the very end was another card I got from a tin, it’s not part of the deck.
Ultimate Rares
These cards are what I am most excited to show off. First, I would like to give some pretext to what these cards are and why I am collecting them.
What is an Ultimate Rare?
Ultimate Rare was a rarity that was introduced in English in the 2004 set Soul of the Duelist. Ultimate rare cards “have an embossed foil on the Card Artwork, including the borders of artworks, attribute icon, and on monster cards, the level stars. The card name is printed gold, like an ultra rare.” (the description comes from the Yugioh wiki).
What makes these different than the other rarities is that no card in the set is exclusively an Ultimate Rare. Cards that were found as Rare, Super Rare and Ultra Rare could also be found as an Ultimate Rare. From Soul of the Duelist (2004) to Force of the Breaker (2007) there were 25 Ultimate Rares per set in English and 11 per set in Japanese. If I recall correctly, you would get one Ultimate Rare per box. With 25 cards sharing the same slot, it was extremely difficult to pull the card you wanted in this rarity. Eventually, they lowered the amount of cards in this rarity and then eventually stopped including them in every set.
Why am I collecting them?
As a kid, I managed to pull a few Ultimate Rares and have always appreciated the rarity. I have always thought they looked really cool and showed off the artwork of the card in a different way. The biggest let down about these cards is that they started a couple years after the TCG came out in the US so a lot of classic cards like Red-Eyes Black Dragon, Blue-Eyes White Dragon, Dark Magician and Exodia never got the Ultimate Rare treatment. I recently learned that they actually were released as Ultimate Rares… in Japanese.
Shortly after finding this out I made an Excel spreadsheet of all the Ultimate Rares that came out before Soul of the Duelist and started saving up money to collect them. One interesting thing I learned about these versions of the Ultimate Rares is that they don’t function in sets like they do in Soul of the Duelist onward. Most of these sets will feature at most 2 cards as Ultimate Rares. Sometimes they can be found in other rarities such as Secret Rare or Ultra Rare but some of them can only be found as Ultimate Rares which I think is super fun. Lastly, I don’t believe that you are guaranteed an Ultimate Rare per box like you were in the sets I mentioned before. I think it’s closer to one Ultimate Rare per 2 or 3 boxes which I think is similar to the Gold Star cards in Pokemon. However, I can’t find much info out there about the pull rates of these sets.
So here is my ongoing list of Ultimate Rares that I’ve collected so far. With each card I will include the Set Name, Set Number, English name of the card as well as the Japanese translation of the name if it’s different. These will be provided from the Yugioh Wiki. I will also include any details that I find neat about the card in general. Lastly, the order of the cards are the order that I purchased them in.
Set: Spell of Mask
Code: SM-51
Blue-Eyes White Dragon
Set: Thousand-Eyes Bible
Code:TB-34
Thousand-Eyes Restrict/Thousand-Eyes Sacrifice
Set: The New Ruler
Code: 301-056
Red-Eyes Black Dragon
Set: Power of the Guardian
Code:304-054
Black Luster Soldier/Chaos Soldier
Set: Pharaonic Guardian
Code: PH-52
Gaia the Fierce Knight/Dark Knight Gaia
Set: Invader of Darkness
Code: 307-010
Dark Magician of Chaos/Black Magician of Chaos
Set: Labyrinth of Darkness
Code: LN-14
Dark Necrofear
Set: 307-057
Code: Invader of Darkness
Exodia the Forbidden One/Exodia the Sealed One
If you’ve never seen the Japanese version of Exodia, you’ll notice it looks a little different. The original card as well as the other 4 pieces feature a pentagram which was censored in the anime/card game.
Miscellaneous
Lastly, this is where I will put random items and cards that were not featured above.
Ultimate Kaiba Briefcase:
This is the briefcase that I mentioned earlier that came with the deck I showed in my binder collection. The case also came with the display with 3 Secret Rare Blue-Eyes White Dragons
Bandai Millennium Puzzle and Box:
Putting this puzzle together is no joke. I did it twice and needed a guide after trying for 6+ hours.
Hello Kitty x Yugioh Mcdonald’s Promotion:
This is just something silly that I didn’t’ think much of when it came out. I went to the 4 McDonalds in my town several times trying to get the toys I didn’t have. It must have been weird for the workers to have an adult man ask what kind of Hello Kitty toys they have in stock. I still need the Blue-Eyes and Exodia as well as the Red-Eyes that wasn’t released in the US for some reason.
Thank you so much for taking a look 
I love the early sets and their artwork. I don’t know what it is about them but they certainly bring a smile to my face when I see them. I feel like Pokemon was a lot easier to keep up with
