I don’t buy stuff I don’t have a connection with. That’s my number one rule when it comes to hobbies.
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Best time to buy is when no one else wants it and the worst time is when its hot.
Tbh yugioh booster boxes are harder to find than pokemon; on the flip side yugioh cards are easier to grade than pokemon (if centering is good).
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That’s a very good rule
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I have 1 graded YGO card for nostalgia purposes. Thanks @chok ! I find it difficult to understand sets/rarities when searching for YGO cards to buy. This is how I feel.
That’s exactly why I stick with the first few ‘original’ sets in North American 1st Edition. Everything else is way too confusing for newcomers, even if many reprints might be rarer than their originals.
An e4-like forum for YGO collectors could bring more attention to the more obscure sets, promos and reprints. But for now I only collect what I know and what I have connection to.
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based on the feedback here seems like yugioh is not very interesting for most…might be time to buy i think.
I’m gonna give some super high-level advice for those that don’t know where to start but are curious to learn more (although if you don’t know anything about yugioh / have no passion, might be best to avoid).
**For yugioh, the wotc equivalent / original era comprise the following sets:**Legend of Blue-Eyes White Dragon (base set equivalent, a few cards have passed $3k and one has passed $15k)
Metal Raiders
Magic Ruler
Pharaoh’s Servant
Labyrinth of Nightmare
Legacy of Darkness
Pharaonic Guardian
Magician’s Force
Dark Crisis
Invasion of Chaos
Ancient Sanctuary (neo destiny equivalent, but a lot less sexy)
The holo equivalent / chase card rarities are as follows:
Ultra rares (1 in 12 pull rate, 2 per booster box)
Secret rare (1 in 2 booster boxes)
The north american variant is the most valuable
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And it is important to note that Hobby Boxes are the 24 pack boxes and Retail Boxes are the 36 pack boxes. The difference between the two is the secret rare you can get from them. There are only 2 secret rares in each of these sets (1 in the hobby and 1 in the retail). In most cases the hobby secret rare is the better one which is more collectible and valuable (like Jinzo and Dark Magician Girl for example).
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I personally consider the beginning GX era boxes (Cybernetic Revolution, Elemental Energy, Shadow of Infinity, The Lost Millennium) like the Neo boxes as these are the beginning of yugioh’s gen 2 (GX stands for Generation Next). The ultimate rares in these sets have become some of the most expensive cards in the game outside of first edition LOB.
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I have a couple hobby boxes and did not know that. Thank you for the info!
Glad to help! The biggest difference between hobby and retail boxes comes into play with the GX era and with ultimate rares. For those boxes (SOD-POTD) you can tell the difference by the UPC code on the back of the box. I do not have a list of what the numbers for the hobby boxes are but hobby boxes here are extremely more valuable. In this era, hobby boxes are the only way to get super rares and ultra rares as ultimate rare. In retail boxes, only rares come as ultimate rare. Hobby boxes of the good sets can be worth almost twice the price of retail boxes.
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)
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Great points. I agree with everything you said. I think you need to consider sealed product as well. IMO the biggest thing that yugioh has over pokemon is that every card that has every been printed (unless it states otherwise) is still playable in the game today. Many people like to bling out their decks and open older packs to get the cards to use, not just grade. This adds value to them and like with all sealed product, the more that is opened, the less sealed there is. At this point I mainly just buy and sell sealed (5ds with some GX thrown in) and i’d say that most of my sales are to people who are planning on opening the product (based on my conversations with them when they message me about the product). With ghost rares spanning so many sets, there are so many sets that people hunt these days.
@dragonwarrior , sealed product has potential, but not every sealed product ist equal. 1st Ed LOB and MFC are probably the most valuable, followed by Invasion of Chaos (Dark Magician of Chaos and Black Luster Soldier EOTB seem to be even more popular than Chaos Emperor Dragon). Other good investments would be the Starter Deck Yugi and Kaiba 1st Ed, and the limited Dark Duel Stories game with the Blue-Eyes inside. I wouldn’t speculate on people buying boxes that contain Ghost Rares though. Not with the abysmal pull rate. The reason why something like Base Set boxes are so expensive is because there’s at least a reasonable chance to pull Charizard.
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@darky97 while I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you, I think your stance is a bit one-sided towards ‘nostalgia’ as we know it in Pokemon. The cards you listed are valuable and will probably continue to rise, but I don’t think that these are the only ones to do so.
IMO the biggest difference between Pokemon and Yugioh that you didn’t even mention is that we’re talking about a collectors franchise on one side and a playing/TCG franchise on the YGO side. In your comment you only go in depth about nostalgia from popular monsters of the anime.
I hypothesize that an organically grown YGO collector base will not only go by that ‘aestethic/anime’ nostalgia, but also by the playability aspect of cards, because they have fond memories of the actual gameplay, too. There are cards like Jinzo and Relinquished that check both the playability box and the general ‘aestethic/anime popularity’ box, which is the best of both worlds. Also you completely left out trap and spell cards, while there are some very important ones among them too.
Being primarily players instead of collectors could of course also mean that they don’t buy PSA cards at all, because you can’t play with them anymore. In which case you would be right and only the famous anime monsters will hold any value. Then the buyers wouldn’t be actual YGO players but rather Pokemon collectors that expand their portfolio or just some random casual 90s kids that get hit by nostalgia.
Tldr; I personally wouldn’t focus on popular artworks exclusively, card effects and playability also play a big role.
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@muk ,Sure, that list is not complete (I also forgot Relinquished and Thousand-Eyes Restrict). It’s just that I think that these cards will be the most likely to see growth first. So these would be good first considerations for people who start investing in Yugioh. I don’t know if playability will play that much of a role in the collector’s market, we’ll see. Regarding Spells and Traps, some might rise in value, but I don’t think they will come close to the popular monsters. It’s like Trainer cards in Pokemon (not counting trophy and price cards here): Yes, you will have some really expensive and popular ones like Brock, but overall you will have more valuable Pokemon cards than Trainer cards.
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@darky97, dont underestimate the power of monster reborn, mirror force and polymerization.
And to your other point on the sealed product. Yes not all sealed is equal but I am not speculating about the ghost rare hype. I am basing what I am saying off that I literally sell most of my extra inventory of these boxes to people who are opening them as they tell me so.
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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
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I’m glad I fell in love with Yugioh and Pokemon the same time in the early 2000’s. I have completed the entire 1st Edition Legend of Blue Eyes set in PSA 10 except for Blue Eyes White Dragon LOB-001 (The Charizard of Yugioh). The others I have are in Magicians Force, Invasion of Chaos, and Magic Ruler. Retro Pack 1 & 2 are some others I’m collecting slowly. Recently picked up the great Blue Eyes Shining Dragon 
I’m glad people are not paying attention much cause that means I can go after those tournament/promo level cards. I go to this website below to look up the names of the cards and I buy them up to add to my collection. Most are in Japan and you have to wait months but I got the patience to wait and be one of the few to have it.
yugioh.fandom.com/wiki/Category:TCG_tournament_promotional_cards