Time to buy yugioh?

[quuador]

@darky97

If you consider investing in Yugioh, you should be aware of a few things. Mostly why Yugioh is not like Pokemon, and it’s not just because of the release date difference.

One of the reasons why Pokemon is so collectible is because it has a limited amount of monsters that gets reprinted over and over again. This is a huge advantage, because many people feel nostalgic towards a certain Pokemon and want to collect different variants of it, and also the majority of new cards are already somewhat familiar. And since the concept applies to every Pokemon, there will be tons of additional collectors because everyone has their own favorite Pokemon.

Compare that to Yugioh, where I can count the number of iconic monsters on two (three) hands. Blue-Eyes White Dragon, Dark Magician, Dark Magician Girl, Dark Paladin, Red-Eyes B. Dragon, Summoned Skull, Buster Blader, Black Luster Soldier, Jinzo, Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon, God cards, Exodia (and maybe Stardust Dragon and some e-heroes). That’s all of your nostalgia. And to make things worse, the artwork variety is considerably less than in Pokemon. Many prints of those nostalgic monsters are reprints with the same artwork, sometimes even with the same rarity. So if you want to invest in Yugioh, I strongly recommend you only go for those popular monsters, and only certain releases/rarities of them (and some exceptions which I will come to). In fact, at this point in time only Blue-Eyes White Dragon and Dark Magician Girl are really sought after. Dark Magician and Red-Eyes come behind, then maybe the God cards.

One advantage Yugioh has over Pokemon is 1st Edition. Except for promos there will always be a first edition card. And frankly, you should think twice about going for an unlimited card, because Konami has been reprinting early sets like LOB in unlimited, and it’s super hard to distinguish new unlimited cards from old ones (I think PSA doesn’t make the distinction either).

Aside from the nostalgic monsters mentioned above, I think that the English Ghost rares have a huge potential. They have the right size for a collection (34 or 40 if you count Gold Ghost Rares), they are not being printed anymore, and their pullrate was 1 in 288 packs (= 1 in 12 boxes, = 1 per case). It’s the closest thing to the Gold Stars. And due to the very low pull rate, people will always go for the graded cards instead of sealed boxes, making them an even better investment. Ultimate Rares on the other hand have a few problems, mainly that there are too many to make for a good mini set, and they are still being printed so they are not a closed entity. However, some of the early Ultimate Rares fetch a high price, because they are very hard to grade.

The other exception are trophy cards. Yugioh trophy cards have the potential to blow Pokemon out of the water. Mostly because they are distributed in much smaller numbers. Many trophy cards are a one-of. I don’t know much about trophy cards, but even I know of Crush Card Virus, Gold Sarcophagus, Cyber-Stein, Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon (T3-01) and a stainless steel Black Luster Soldier, so those might be the most popular ones.

So, if you want to invest in Yugioh, here are my top recommendations:

Blue-Eyes White Dragon (DDS-001, LOB-001 1st, SDK-001 1st (the 3 OGs), SM-51 (the only Ultimate Rare of the OG artwork), Gld5-en001 (gold ghost rare), trc1-jp000 (japanese ghost rare with original artwork), 2018-jpp01 (2018 world attendance card with a very limited distribution but I don’t know how many copies), Jump Festa 2000 (probably the scarcest Blue-Eyes with super low distribution at Jump Festa 2000))

Dark Magician Girl (MFC-000 1st (OG), G3-11 (first release of the monster and also a prize card, 2400 copies exist in rare, 300 copies exist in secret rare), 2017-jpp01 (2017 worlds attendance card with 2500 copies in existence))
God cards (G4-01/G4-02/G4-03 (first release), GBI-001/GBI-002/GBI-003 (first international release)
English Ghost Rares (preferably 1st Ed) (list)
Trophy cards (if you have the cash)

Great list, one I agree with completely. Only other thing that comes to mind (although they are maybe lesser known), are some of the very desirable misprints, like the LOB-000 Tri-Horned Dragon with both reversed Secret Rare foil and Ultra Rare (double misprint). Those have increased in price quite a bit the last few years. Some recent sales I’ve seen were around around 750-1000 USD depending on condition. Also, a more recent misprint are the BLLR and COTD Prismatic misprints. I know at least one copy of each BLLR Ultra Rare exists with the Prismatic misprint (and the most I’ve seen of a single BLLR card is four thus far) - a few years ago they were going for 150-400 USD, but these days they are going for 400-2000 depending on which one it is. And COTD 1st editions prismatic misprints are a scarcer. I’ve seen about 15 thus far, half Super and half Ultra Rares, and only one card duplicated. The others are - from what has popped up thus far - one of a kind. I actually have one of these incoming for my Yu-Gi-Oh rarity collection, so more about that later.

And one other things that comes to mind are the solid silver and solid gold Blue-Eyes White Dragons for the 10th Anniversary. Just like the solid Gold Base Set Pikachu of the Pokémon 20th anniversary, they have triplet in price in just 3-4 years time, and given it’s a Blue-Eyes, I think it will only increase tbh.

Oh, and one more actually: the IGAS-JP000 Ten Thousand Dragon. The 10,000th OCG Yu-Gi-Oh card printed, and the only one with the 10,000 Secret Rare rarity. I’ve bought it for 385 USD in the first week of release. A month later it was already at 1k, and I think they’re at around 1.5-2.5k USD right now. I’ve also heard the pull rates are extremely low for these, but not sure how low exactly. Might be the same 1 in 12 boxes pull rates as English Ghost Rares. Actually one of my favorite Yu-Gi-Oh cards, since it’s so unique. I explain a bit about it here.

But apart from those, it’s indeed mostly the older BEWD and DMG right now. And PSA and BGS seems to increase in popularity as well, BGS actually more than PSA from what I’ve seen in some of the Yu-Gi-Oh communities I’m active in, but I haven’t paid to close attention to graded Yu-Gi-Oh card to be completely honest, since I’m mostly in misprint groups.

Greetz,
Quuador