It is true that SDK is guaranteed in every deck, however they are relatively tough to grade straight out of the deck from my personal experience. Ive opened quite a few of the 1st edition north American decks and I’d say the PSA 10 success rate is about 1 in 3. A lot are badly centered, come with a foil scratch, and or have a scuff on the back (quite common)
I actually recently got back my ghost rare black rose dragon from PSA as a 10 but they mislabeled it as a first Ed. Clearly the difference in price there is massive. Haven’t been too sure what to do about it.
Yeah I think the right thing to do would be to contact PSA immediately and tell them it was labelled incorrectly. Since its they’re fault they should put it in the correct slab for free.
I feel like the graded Yu-Gi-Oh! market is going to experience some bubble-like behavior for SOME cards. Cards like your DDS/LOB/SDK BEWDs aren’t going anywhere BUT we now have tons of people grading anything they can get their hands on.
Pops for most 2002-2004 cards are incredibly low and PSA 10 prices for random cards really make me scratch my head. The print runs of everything outside of NA LOB were HUGE. The most sought after SET cards from this era (outside of 1st dmg and jinzo) sell for less than $100 raw. These cards are not rare or scarce.
I end up stumbling across a psa return video almost every week. Huge quantities are being pumped into the market so I definitely feel like these less desirable cards are going to become very cheap.
This new interest in grading is also going to probably make the “Big 5” more available. Right now LOB 1st and DDS 1st psa 9/10s aren’t available anywhere. This scarcity is why the price has grown so dramatically imo but I don’t think this is going to be the case in 12-24 months and we will see these prices stagnate.
I feel that if you’re sitting on a lot of the less desirable cards if should be dumping them now.
I am trying to fill a binder with all 1st Ed Holos from LOB to EOJ, because those are the Sets from the time i collected when I was a kid. But I still have a long way to go because some cards are hard to find in a Good Condition (damn you overpriced Dark Magician Girl).
When you say that print runs were huge, are you saying print runs in terms of 1st edition only, or in terms of 1st edition + unlimited? I do think there seems to be a lot of drying up for old 1st edition sealed products, which is why sometimes the box is worth waaaaay more than what the contents justify (@ MRL 1st Ed.) but unlimited sealed products flow like there’s no tomorrow.
I’m also curious what the “Big 5” is. Never heard if it!
LOB 1st/SDK 1st/DDS BEWD
1st Dark Magician Girl
Corrected Dark Paladin
They are the big 5 ygo cards of the collectable side of things.
Then you have your next “tier” of sought after cards like 1st ghost BRD/Stardust, TP1 Mechanicalchaser, TP2 Jar, IOC 1st CED/BLS, PSV 1st Jinzo, GBI secret gods, Ulti 1st Sacred Beasts and Retro Pack Secrets.
Both 1st and unlimited print runs were massive. It boomed and they just kept pumping out more. It’s been 17 years so I’m not suprised there isn’t much out there, it was cheap for a very long time so people just kept opening product over the years.
Yu-Gi-Oh! had a much larger and a more active playerbase than Pokemon for most of it’s life, stores needed to crack open product to get singles for players.
So you consider dark magician (LOB, SDK, DDS), red eyes (LOB), exodia (LOB) for example as second tier and not in the big 5?
Personally Id also put dark magician, red eyes, and probably exodia in the top as well, or at least higher than the relatively more niche collector cards like RP secrets or TP ultras
