First time poster here. Been lurking for a couple days and only recently got into collecting WOTC era Pokémon cards. Despite being a pretty new Pokémon collector, I’ve been collecting Yugioh cards for years. My collection is fairly high end, raw cards from the first few years of the game’s North American life.
For those of you more entrenched in the Pokémon TCG, I’m curious to know your thoughts on Yugioh as a collectible and how it compares to its larger two brothers Pkmn and MTG. Thought this would be the best place to ask.
I would stick to the same rules as Pokemon collecting. Stick to the first generation 1st edition cards in mint condtion preferably PSA 9 or 10 and 1st generation sealed product from LOB all the way to maybe RISE OF DESTINY Timeframe. Even though Yu-Gi-Oh didn’t keep the same level of main stream popularity that Pokemon has (probably because of the darker nature of it) it was still a huge part of a lot of people’s childhood and will still hold a high nostalgia factor which collectors will continue to pay for in the future!
In terms of collectability i believe Pokemon is way ahead and personally for me a lot more enjoyable. I do collect Yugioh cards btw, specifically my favorite cards from the older era of the game.
Yugioh has so many nuanced differences to Pokémon that it’s an entirely different beast in comparison.
Pokémon has a huge collector base that does nothing with playing the game while the opposite Is more true for yugioh. This tends to make the cards fluctuate in value more with yugioh in the newer cards.
Old school cards in both hobbies are collectible, but yugioh suffers from massive reprints marking the cards less valuable. This is especially true when it comes to world release cards, yugioh has European, Australian, North American, Asian English just in their English releases. Pokémon doesn’t have that, they just have different languages which makes all the cards collectible around the world vs regional collections.
There’s no big card in yugioh. If you asked me what the holy grail card in Pokémon is you’d get one of two answers, with yugioh there’s nothing.
Pokémon has a big relationship with PSA, to the point where BGS cards are second class. Yugioh doesn’t seem to have that issue. It’s more of a free market to choose between the grading company and both will get you relatively good results in resale.
Finally, Pokémon is much more popular worldwide.
In conclusion if you’re looking at a pure collecting aspect, yugioh is defiantly second class to Pokémon by a large margin. The general strategy with both is the same, collect what you like and shoot for the expensive cards first, but with Pokémon expect the cards to increase in value at a much faster rate and a more competitive collecting environment.
If you have a genuine interest in the cards you can find the positives in both markets. Just don’t expect too much of an edge over other newbies just because you have experience with yugioh.
I collected yugioh a long time before I even looked at Pokemon and I think the one “advantage” yugioh has is that because very little was graded and PSA has no idea what they were grading the true NA prints of the “Big 5” are overstated in the pop report.
Mint graded copies of cards are truly scarce whereas almost every Pokemon set card is readily available.
This is reflected in prices as the “Big 5” experience immense growth for raw and graded copies of cards.
My (possibly uninformed) opinion is that yugioh lacks the strong collector base that Pokemon has and generally has a less commited player base than MTG. That’s just my impression.
I think there’s additional things that make yugioh a generally weaker collectable from a financial viewpoint. Cullers brought up the thing about yugioh missing “the” card. People recognize a 1st ed charizard and a black lotus for their value and desirability. Yugioh has… blue eyes? Which version? In 2018 both Pokemon and MTG are established as serious collectables that people are comfortable enough to dump 10s of thousands of dollars into. Maybe that scene exists in yugioh but I haven’t seen it. Again, this is just my mostly uniformed impression. I think there’s opportunity in all three hobbies though.
I collect some Yugioh, just the packs and cards that bring the most nostalgia. In my opinion, the reprints of sets and the constant reprint of cards is something that Konami went overboard with.
I enjoy collecting the old 2002-2005 packs, but seeing legend of blue eyes, metal raiders etc reprinted in the “6+ years” packs just kind of sucks. It does make the first print packs a lot more desirable, but I feel like printing the same card artwork in multiple sets just decreases my desire in owning the card at all.
I definitely don’t assume I’ll have any kind of edge over others. Pretty much accepting at this point that I’ll have to start from the ground up on everything and work my way into a decent collection super slowly. You’re right that Yugioh doesn’t have a big card that comes to mind for everyone, but I bet you’d get a good number of mentions for LOB 1st Edition 1st Print BEWD.
I’m on mobile and don’t have time to respond to everyone right now, but I just wanted to say thanks for giving your input here. It’s rare that I find any other TCG collecting/investing community willing to talk about Yugioh. In a way I wish I would have stuck with Pokémon collecting/investing from the beginning, but competitive Yugioh swayed me into eventually completing sets and such.
As others have stated, Yugioh will most likely never reach the popularity or price point of Pokemon in terms of the collectible market. On top of the ridiculous amount of reprints and lack of an established Holy Grail, there are no unique cards that really make Yugioh stand out as a collectible. Pokemon has prize cards with unique art where very few copies exist. While Yugioh also has prize cards that are rare (SJC and YCS cards), all of them have reprints that make the original look less unique. One can look at a Pikachu Illustrator 10 miles away and know that it's THE Illustrator card. One cannot look at a Cyber Stein 10 miles away and distinguish whether it's from SJC or DB2. This isn't a bad thing, as Yugioh is primarily a card game, so having these cards accessible to everyone is great.
Another thing to consider is the popularity of set cards. Pokemon has cards within different sets that stand out for collectibility (1st ed base, Neo shinings, Gold Stars to name a few). Yugioh does not. Once again, this is mainly due to Konami focusing on the game itself, rather than collectibility. For Yugioh, LOB 1st ed is pretty much the only set that stands out as a widely popular collectible set, and the other set cards sell mainly from personal interest. This is just my opinion of course, so if someone has more insight please do correct.
As ptccards said above, I agree that Dark Magician Girl should be considered the Holy Grail of Yugioh. The reason I would not pick the original Blue Eyes or Dark Magician is because these cards have 3 major copies that each hold similar value. While they both are really popular, each has the LOB version, starter deck version, and DDS versions that were released really close to each other. Therefore, people don't really know what should be considered the OG card out of the 3. Dark Magician Girl, on the other hand, is super popular and only has one version that stands out in the TCG (MFC-000 1st).
Despite the reprints, I think Yugioh has a lot of good things to offer for genuine collectors too. For one, relative to Pokemon, collecting Yugioh is much cheaper. The original LOB booster box goes for around 4000, and prize cards are also affordable (again, relative to Pokemon). The cards are very pretty, and the nostalgia factor is very much present (the MFC Dark Magician Girl is my favorite card out of all trading cards ever since I was young). There are some cool things you can focus on as a collector for Yugioh as well. For example, you can go for the first print 1st edition LOB rather than the second print 1st edition, or try and collect the 1st ed Duelist Genesis cards.
At the end of the day, it all comes down to what your goals are. If you are hoping for a larger increase in value over the long term, Pokemon will be the better option. But if you are striving to complete a set of original nostalgic cards, Yugioh will be cheaper and easier to do. Sorry if you knew all this, as you seem to be a veteran Yugioh collector. Hopefully this helps some others as well!
Something others haven’t mentioned is that PSA doesn’t differentiate between rarities of cards and nobody will ever have an accurate idea of the pop rate of max rarity cards.
But i do feel like yugioh is currently undervalued and in a similar position to pokemon in the earlier years of collecting - something to keep an eye out in a few years.