Be Extremely Cautious Buying Graded Yu-Gi-Oh! cards

Collecting
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Being Playable rather than Collectable is what gives Yu-Gi-Oh! cards value 99% of the timeYu-Gi-Oh! collectors do not grade cards. They never show up in auction houses or in buy/sell/trade groups on Facebook, people don’t look for them at Regionals/Nationals/competitive events and there’s relatively no demand for them compared to Pokemon because Yu-Gi-Oh! cards are playable. People want to use them because there’s no set rotation in the game. Some people build their favourite decks no matter how bad or meta-irrelevant they are just to own them, some old cards are extremely playable or become playable when new product is released and some are used in popular old formats. I’m deep into this hobby and I’ve never ever heard of someone paying a premium for a PSA graded card that wasn’t a Blue-Eyes White Dragon. The idea is quite foreign.

Cards like 1st Edition LOB Blue-Eyes or DDS Blue-Eyes have only significantly increased in value in the past year because new support was released making these cards the ultimate bling for people that want to build decks, whilst there’s definitely collectors that want to keep them in a binder forever if you grade that card you’re limiting the market you can sell it to. Most Yu-Gi-Oh! collectors will not overpay for cards and are extremely frugal when it comes to buying what we call “expensive jank”. Old unplayable ultimate rares and prize support cards might be listed online but unlike Pokemon, take a long time to sell unless heavily discounted. The collector culture is extremely different to Pokemon’s established market.

Because of this the population for graded cards is low.

More Yu-Gi-Oh! cards are graded PSA 10 than PSA 9
If you don’t believe me then go and check the POP report. Maybe graders have an eye for these cards and only send in the best specimens or that the print quality is better than the average Pokemon card but the numbers tell us that for most cards it’s harder for Yu-Gi-Oh! cards to receive a 9 grade than a 10.

Either PSA doesn’t know what they’re doing or the production quality has very few flaws because most cards are graded a 10. I’ll tend to lean towards the latter because yugioh cards tend not to be damaged straight from boosters like pokemon cards are. I would advise against looking at PSA 10 Yu-Gi-Oh! cards the same way you might look at a PSA 10 WotC holo. Yu-Gi-Oh! print runs for old 1st Edition sets were also much higher than the print run of 1st Ed. Base Set.

A small, shallow market exists for PSA Yu-Gi-Oh! You could probably make a lot of money grading Yu-Gi-Oh! cards and selling them to collectors that are unaware of how easy they are to find or collectors that see Yu-Gi-Oh! PSA 10s as the equivalent of a WotC PSA 10. From my own experience; t****he print quality of Yu-Gi-Oh! is simply better than Pokemon. The only real issue Yu-Gi-Oh! has is centering and even then most cards aren’t off-centre. Cards just don’t come out of boosters with edgewear.

**What SHOULD you buy that’s graded?**PSA 10 LOB* (LOB-XXX, the North American print) 1st Edition Ultra and Secret rares ARE worth buying because there will always be a market for them. Stay away from playable cards and stick to the iconic, original series/“generation”/“duel monsters era” cards from the core sets like Secret 1st MFC Dark Magician Girl, LOB 1st Dark Magician/Blue-Eyes/Red-Eyes because they’re the face of the game and have the same ‘all-star’ appeal as Base set Zard. When you think Yu-Gi-Oh! you think these cards.

Everything just isn’t that sought after in comparison, collect and grade what you want but understand that you’re going to hold something that won’t be easy to move unless you throw it up on eBay and hope somebody bites.

Mass Collector Appeal is the key. The first thing a Pokemon collector would go for when it comes to Yu-Gi-Oh! will be a Blue-Eyes 99% of the time.
Don’t buy Unlimited Graded Cards
I’d like to stress this, stick to 1st Edition cards. I want to say this in the most objective way possible but if someone is buying unlimited graded cards from early Yu-Gi-Oh! sets for a huge premium then they are overpaying. There’s no way to defend it, these sets have been overprinted for years. Some sets that were first printed in 2002 have been printed again in 2010 and once more in 2014/15.

For example, this: www.ebay.com.au/itm/YuGiOh-Dark-Magician-Graded-PSA-10-GEM-MINT-LOB-005-Leg-Blue-Eyes-White-Dragon-/311789017725?hash=item489812da7d:g:l~AAAOSwxN5Wa8~o

This print run of Dark Magician( unlimited LOB-XXX) you can buy them for under $5 raw, even though it’s a PSA 10 it’s still a very easy to find card with nothing to strictly differentiate it from one released in 2002.

The fact he wants $180 is ridiculous but this stuff sells, you could buy 5 copies of this card raw very easily and you’d have a high chance of at least one of them receiving a 10 grade. Don’t compare something like this to a PSA 10 Base Set Unlimited (4th Print) Zard/Blastoise/Venusaur.

Unless you have an expansive knowledge of the hobby stay away from anything printed after 2008. The only 2 cards I could think of with mass collector appeal worth grading which are that recent would be the 1st. Edition Ghost Rare Stardust Dragon and Black Rose Dragon and that’s only because no 1st Edition The Duelist Genesis booster boxes were released and they capture mass fan appeal. They would probably also not achieve a high grade either.

PSA Has Graded Fake Cards

On more than 1 occasion PSA has graded fake Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, it’s a little ridiculous but their inexperience with the game is apparent. The most notable are the fake god cards and a fake giant soldier of stone. It’s not common to find these but be careful.
Foreign Cards

Generally French, Italian and German core set ultra and secret rares are much harder to find than their English counterparts and meta-relevant cards fetch a huge premium however, they don’t have mass collector appeal. I would advise against grading these cards if you plan to re-sell them. Collector’s will almost always prefer North American English print cards up until 2011 where a change in the print process drastically changed the look of US print cards with European print cards being preferred outside of the US.
For a few older sets Spanish and Portuguese cards as they were overprinted. Collectors prefer English print and in 2013 a huge surplus of Spanish and Portuguese Starter Decks, LOB and MRD sealed boxes were sold. You could buy the Spanish LOB boxes for as little as $15 USD. The only Spanish/Portuguese card from LOB with any significant value is Raigeki because it’s playable.

Grading Japanese cards circles back to the “all-star” factor except less people will likely buy them. Collecting Japanese cards just isn’t a widespread practice in TCG regions.

There are some examples of foreign cards which are much rarer than or don’t have an English counterpart, the best examples being TFK Sinister Serpent and TFK Harpies’ Feather Duster. These are extremely rare video game promos that were only released in Spain.

**If you really want graded Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, aside from a handful of exceptions you’re better of buying a few copies of a card and getting them graded yourself. This runs contrary to Pokemon but the sheer number of cards that are graded as a 10 by PSA suggests that this is the way to go.

Maybe this will change in time but right now it’s a sellers market because this stuff just isn’t being graded. 1 determined collector with a PSA membership could probably crash the market for 1 particular card… or make a lot of money grading and then selling cheap cards.**
Here are some examples of what I would stay away from:

The print run for the Starter Deck: Kaiba Evolution was huge and this card is basically a bulk holo. There is absolutely no demand for this card and you can buy the sealed product it came in for less than what this card sold for.

Also, this:

This RP01 Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon was a guaranteed promo in a $10 USD product^. You could buy at least 25 nm/m raw copies for the asking price here and they are not hard to find at all.

*[The North American Print is the easiest print of LOB to find but it’s valued more… because it’s preferred? Nobody really knows why and the European and Australian English release cards came out at the same time and are much harder to find due to smaller print runs. The rarest English print run is the unlimited print run with the card code ‘LOB-ENXXX’ fyi because they weren’t released in boxes, only a select few promotional items. The ultras and secrets are almost impossible to find online]

^This card was not released in the US however in all other European territories where English cards were sold the product it came in was priced the same way a $10USD product would be priced.

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FWIW they also grade fake cards as pointed out by @areestee here: www.elitefourum.com/t/fake-psa-yu-gi-oh-cards/15535/1

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While there is some truth to what you are saying, I disagree with the argument that graded Yu-Gi-Oh cards are worthless and/or not sought after by collectors. Simply put, yes, there IS a market demand for them despite it being smaller than for Pokemon cards or Sports Cards. Yu-Gi-Oh! being newer to the collectible scene than Pokemon is what I view as the cause of many of the problems that you, and many others including myself have pointed out.

First off, not all YGO cards get their market value from playability. The current cards do yes, but those are generally not the cards that collectors would be after. Much like Pokemon, the most valuable YGO cards tend to be the ones that have been long out of print and have no use in the current TCG/OCG metagame. They draw their value not from playability, but from scarcity and nostalgia.

As a matter of fact, to turn the playability argument around, I personally have found truly mint YGO cards to be much more difficult to find than Pokemon cards precisely because it was/is a much more played game. Rest assured that many more 1st Edition SDK/LOB Blue-Eyes White Dragons saw play as opposed to 1st Edition Base Set Charizards.

To say that YGO cards tend to not be damaged straight from the pack is untrue too. You are just as likely to find centering issues, factory lines, whitening, and all the other problems that would instantly disqualify your “pack fresh” YGO card from being a PSA 10.
I’ve said before and provided evidence as well, that in general, the YGO fanbase’s definition of NM/M tends to be questionable at best as compared to Pokemon’s. If you think it’s so easy to grade 10’s, I’d challenge you to just go buy a few copies of a YGO card that are listed as mint by various sellers and get them graded to see what your success rate is. Chances are, if you want a guaranteed mint YGO card, you are still better off going the already graded route.

In regards to market values, yes, some of the asking (and even sold) prices may seem pretty ridiculous, but at the end of the day, cards are worth whatever people are willing to pay for them whether that be Pokemon or YGO. With YGO in particular, we are talking about a situation in which there is a very unstable and indeterminate supply and demand, which means that applies doubly so.

To bring it all together in a more important point, it is precisely because of the issues mentioned above that it is important for a standard to be established in YGO collecting. While it can be said that PSA has established themselves as such for Pokemon, I agree with you that the same cannot be said for YGO right now. So far, PSA has shown through various examples that they have limited knowledge pertaining to the franchise and may have some homework to do in that regard. The subjectivity of grades versus actual card condition is a whole other can of worms that stretches far beyond YGO, or Pokemon, and can probably be argued on forever.

TL;DR Version: Yes, there are issues with graded YGO cards, no, those issues do not warrant dismissing the idea of graded YGO cards completely. Given the time and the chance with the help of the community and fanbase, I am sure the market will establish itself eventually.

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Thoughts in quote. The majority of what I saw in completed listings was worthless junk that someone has graded. There were a handful of cards that are sought after but the majority were cards worth less than $10 going for stupidly high prices and not even old stuff either, relatively new cards too.

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How can you dismiss a market as non existent when there’s sold listings to be viewed?

What you think a card is valued at and what it sells for are two different things. You can say something is overpriced if you wish, but to claim that there’s no market or potential is very short sighted.

Basically, what you’re doing is look at a trend of the majority but failing to look at the potential or the minority. There ARE people who are trying to get a PSA 10 LOB set, there are people who are willing to spend $180 on a SKE Blue-Eyes, there are people who collect graded yugioh cards.

Personally, I’ve been building my position in the yugioh market, from when I started I’m already up 150% from my original invested. It’s a lot smaller than some of my other investments but there’s HUGE potential in it. In my opinion the HUGE potential in it involves grading.

There’s a lot more that goes into why I disagree with what you’re saying, but I don’t feel like getting into a big debate about it. You’re entitled to your opinion just as much as mine.

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I prob would have paid around $80-100 for that starter deck blue eyes. Since I have a side blue eyes collection and if it’s something I need for it, I don’t mind paying way more than face value. A lot of the psa 10 Rays I have are $2-10 cards that I’ve paid 100+ in psa 10.

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I agree with what @cullers is saying about huge potential in the PSA-graded Yugioh market, especially if you are buying raw cards and grading yourself. A PSA 10 can provide astronomical increases in value for many cards; i.e. it isn’t just a 3-5x multiplier of the card’s raw value.

“Nobody is trying to collect a complete set of PSA 10 Legend of Blue-Eyes White Dragon, nobody collects full sets at all. The culture is just extremely different.”

Rusty AKA @thecharizardauthorty is/was after a complete PSA 10 set of Legend of Blue Eyes, so there are at least some people after that goal.

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I am one short of my complete 10 set now. Not even an expensive one, Flame Swordsman!

There is a nice markup in the highly sought after cards. I remember buying 3 exodia 1st editions for roughly $30-$50 apiece. All 3 came back 10’s. The two extra sold for $1000 apiece, and that was a few years back when LOB 1st ed. boxes were still about $400(for market reference)

Now the extra common/uncommons/rares are basically worthless that are PSA 9 or less - if you factor in what I paid to have them graded.

There is a PSA market for Yugioh, but it is very small, so you really have to know what is going to sell.

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If all 3 14 year old cards came back as 10s then there’s definitely something to be said about the print quality of the cards. The majority of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards PSA seems to grade end up being 10s.

I’d argue that it would be much easier for the earlier print runs of Yu-Gi-Oh! to receive 10s than most English print runs of Pokemon.

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The market definitely isn’t established. If it was then you wouldn’t see these ridiculously high prices because eBay would be saturated with PSA 9s and 10s. Very few cards would receive a PSA 8 or lower grade.

I look at these listings and see people outside the hobby buying into something that they know very little about. That is the only way I can explain how some of these things have sold. I feel that people are trying to take Pokemon or MtG logic and apply it to a game where there’s a (relatively) huge supply of cards of mint cards. LOB 1st Ed. didn’t have only 1 print run like 1st Ed. Base Set for example, it was printed for months.

I think people also see an artificial scarcity, for example there might be a population of only 1 SKE 1st edition Blue-Eyes but that’s not because the card is ridiculously rare or sought after or that the print run was tiny. It’s because nobody has bothered to grade any because it’s a bulk holo people within the hobby have no demand for. I have 6 in my bulk right now

I really think that the people buying this stuff are being ripped off and that this is a bubble that can be exploited or it could come crashing down if enough cards entered the market. If I lived in the US I’d be signing up for a PSA membership today after seeing all this and sending multiple bulk orders of iconic cards.

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Are you telling us to not buy graded Yugioh cards or are you trying to tell us not to overpay? Those are two totally different debates. Which goes back to my point
-“You can say something is overpriced if you wish, but to claim that there’s no market or potential is very short sighted.”

If you really want to continue with this, there’s a ton of Evolutions cards that are printed, yet people are still buying them. A lot of them are investing in a market that they feel will expand, or they’re simply collecting.

Apply that thinking to Yugioh, and you have the same results, people think there’s a potential for the market to expand, or they’re simply collecting.

Collecting is the easy one, you don’t always collect for future profit. So the money put into the hobby isn’t relevant, sometimes it’s just cooler to say, ‘hey I have the 1st PSA 10 graded copy of ___ card’.

Potential market gain is a harder debate because nobody knows. Right now I’m gambling that the Yugioh market will become much more lucrative in the future, and I’m sure there’s more people in the same mindset. I personally don’t buy graded cards because I grade cards myself, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t. There’s more than a couple times I almost pulled the trigger and bought a few Exodia/Blue-Eyes PSA 10 cards because, despite what you say, it isn’t as easy as you think to get PSA 10 grades. The cards might come out of the packs better quality than Pokemon cards, but that doesn’t matter when the cards themselves are very prone to damage.

Sharp corners, Glossy finished backs, Poor centering, and general holofoil treatment to the cards are some of the major issues with the cards when grading is involved. It’s also not a sure fire bet to just buy the cards new, because there aren’t a lot of security measures put into the boxes to guarantee they aren’t faked, there was a reputable dealer that had a bunch of the fakes come through their own store. Even when you have a real box there’s virtually no profit if you open it. You’re dealing with a very limited amount of cards that sell, and even smaller chance that they were cut well/don’t have factory defects/don’t have corner dings (this is an issue you don’t usually have with pokemon thanks to their rounded corners) to receive a PSA 10 grade.

Add all the factors together (including the limited market) and you start to see why there’s such a huge price jump for PSA graded cards.

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Both those arguments are intertwined. I think that you’re definitely overpaying if you buy graded Yu-Gi-Oh! cards from what’s available right now on eBay because at this point in time it’s a seller’s market. I definitely understand why people do buy them but if enough people were to start grading cards for this very small market the bubble would pop.

I also think that it would be very easy to take advantage of this market because of the ridiculously high premiums graded cards have sold for compared to Pokemon.

Fakes aren’t really a problem in Yugioh and there’s definitely value in opening certain sets, you just have to know what you’re doing.

If you want to shoot me a pm and I can talk to you about what you’ve bought.

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Original yugioh ultra rares are much harder to come by in mint condition in my opinion. You would get 2 ultra rares, and 4 super rares per box of 24 packs. It is nothing like the newer pull rates in Yugioh. Comparatively in original Base Pokemon, you have an 80% shot of pulling any one holo from a box, where as in Yugioh you have a 20% shot (for Ultras). That coupled with the majority of everything being damaged, PSA 10’s are a lot harder to come by than you would think. I think it is easier for them to get a PSA 10 when pulled from the pack only because light edge wear does not show up as white but rather a light brown, similar to the card border color itself.

I tried buying the single cards for a while and getting them graded but almost always it was a bust. There are so many reprints(EN, E, Asian), and such a small market availability for mint original USA English Yugioh cards that collectors are willing to pay that higher premium.

I personally think it is a weak market, but that is only because there is such a limited collector’s basis. That does not in any way mean the prices are not justified. I personally paid $650 for my Red-Eyes LOB 1st PSA 10, and i am happy with that. I tried on multiple occasions to get a 10, but never could, so I settled for buying the 10 instead of wasting another $100 per raw card.

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So it basically boils down to you thinking the cards are overpriced, and a small graded market.

I’ve already touched a lot on the prices and Rusty has some good insight as well, so I’ll leave that alone.

As for the market Pokemon used to have a non existent grading market too. It took a lot of people to change that mindset over time. In fact I would argue that more graders helped the market become established. With more graders, graded cards became more common, and more accepted.

Now take the 1st edition charizard, which would be around $600 in PSA 10 back then. That was a much higher profit margin back then compared to Yugioh’s profit margin today. That’s the potential, in Yugioh. If you offered me a PSA 10 1st ed Charizard for $600 today I’d gladly buy it.

Could I be wrong and the market crashes in on itself? Maybe. Could I be right? Who knows. Either way, I’ve taken my position in the market and we’ll see where it goes.

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They only doubled the pull rates for Ultras and Secrets at the start of last year otherwise the pull rates have been the same since 2002.

Very few cards pull a $100 raw price though, you’re dealing with the exception rather than the rule. Most raw cards from the earlier sets, 1st. Ed. or otherwise have retained very little value compared to raw Pokemon cards.

I’ve updated the OP because this insight is great, even before posting I understand the value for certain cards… but not bulk supers and ultras.

For example, this: www.ebay.com.au/itm/YuGiOh-Dark-Magician-Graded-PSA-10-GEM-MINT-LOB-005-Leg-Blue-Eyes-White-Dragon-/311789017725?hash=item489812da7d:g:l~AAAOSwxN5Wa8~o

This print run of Dark Magician, unlimited LOB-XXX, has been reprinted up until 2014, maybe even 2015. You can buy them for under $5 raw, even though it’s a PSA 10 it’s still a very easy to find card with nothing to strictly differentiate it from one released in 2002.

The fact he wants $180 is ridiculous but this stuff sells, you could buy 5 copies of this card raw very easily and you’d have a high chance of at least one of them receiving a 10 grade.

This is the type of thing I’m talking about, not ridiculously hard to find stuff.

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I’ve only sold one PSA Graded Yugioh card. My double of a PSA-10 Red Eyes from Joeys World.

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I’ve been convinced the 1st lob cards will take off by 2018. I’m currently selling a 1st exodia+ sheet and with only 3 known in the world (mines flawless;) I really think it’ll be the figurehead of the hobby then. I had a trade offer last month for another PSA 10 1st base charizard (which I seriously collect) and passed on the deal.
Plus, I have an amazing yugioh error card collection that I hope will catch on but not as sure with those?
Finally, I have an Eye of Anubis (gold) roll which another has never surfaced. Love this item:)
Hang in there with your yugioh collectibles. Someday they could be sizzling hot.

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Misprints have value depending on what the card is. No name/wrong name misprints will have more value than most others but the only misprint that has any significant value is the TP2 Morphing Jar with the Jinzo shadow.

www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/yugioh-morphing-jar-tp2-001-ultra-495462327

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How much did you sell it for?

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Anh yes lol. That guy is an eBay dealer and big time yugioh collector of errors. How do I know? Cause a big chunk of his collection he got from me including around 30-40 early uncut sheets including a dozen or so complete error sheets.
Small world;)