I know 2k isn’t cheap but compared to Pokémon I feel as though sometimes Yugioh is more approachable when collecting.
I was surprised this went for so low considering this is basically the Yugioh equivalent of 1st ed base set charizard. Kinda wish I bought it now
Fair fair lol
Yu-Gi-Oh has a smaller collector base than Pokemon, so the demand is lessened. There were some crazy prices at the height of the pandemic, but things have come down since and are much more reasonable now. Even the wavy and glossy 1st ed Legend of Blue Eyes booster boxes are fairly affordable now in the low five figures.
The other thing that keeps prices lower is the availability of Asian-English prints, unlimited prints, and the numerous reprints of the original chase cards.
For me it’s the way they go about reprints and new artwork. If you look at Charizard cards, there’s tons of cards you can tell apart from afar. Looking at Yugioh, this Blue Eyes art
has been 1:1 reprinted at least 31 times from a quick Cardmarket search.
There’s literally only a handful of different arts for cards called “Blue Eyes White Dragon”. Unthinkable in Pokemon. Reprints can boost the popularity of the original, but at least to me, at some point, they do the opposite.
In my experience the average Yu-Gi-Oh fan is younger and the overall audience and appeal is more narrowed on players than collectors it seems. Just like MTG, people really play Yu-Gi-Oh more than solely collect the cards. Pretty much all the Yu-Gi-Oh artworks and cards have been re-printed multiple times over the years, even more than Pokemon or MTG. This allows people to collect cards that look exactly like the originals at much lower barriers of entry than Pokemon on average. I think this has an impact on the demand of the original cards.
For example, why even bother with the original release of LOB Unlimited now when you can just buy the new LOB 25th version and get the same stuff essentially for a fraction of the price now? A re-print is a re-print in the end of the day. 1st Edition is the only exception for collectors because people will always value the 1st Ed release more than anything else (similar to Pokemon).
Anyway, I really like the early sets and I do think they’re somewhat undervalued these days as the market has severely deflated now compared to the Covid cycle. But I think overall, the combination of re-prints and other factors has an impact on the supply/demand for a lot of the cards and the overall market attitude/perception towards the pricing/value of the cards.
I’m absolutely not an expert in yugioh market and collecting, since I’m just a casual player.
I think that ygo is the least ‘hyped’ of the major TCGs, probably is a bit stuck in between the played/adult oriented mtg and the amazing art/collectible pokemon.
There is indeed an affectionate fan base, but probably it failed to really sparkle the nostalgy during the pandemic: returning players found the game radically different from what they remembered (too fast and confusing), never embraced the full art/alt art trend like other tcgs and masterduel app failed to keep a long term interest.
I get that but the card that sold was 1st edition blue eyes. The very first printing so I was so surprised is all
I agree, it probably should have sold for more perhaps. The thing is, it’s hard to compare to Charizard really. Base Set Charizard has become “the” Pokemon card for collectors even those who don’t necessarily have a strong attachment to Pokemon. For example, many Sports card collectors and others want Charizard in their “portfolio” now because they see it more as an investment. This is just how the market has become, more optimization, etc. I don’t really see the same attitude towards Blue Eyes happening anytime soon.
Fair fair. Maybe it’s because I also grew up with Yugioh as well as Pokémon so blue eyes is iconic to me too
I feel the same towards it since I experienced early Yu-Gi-Oh as well. I have nostalgia for them. Not as much as Pokemon, but enough that I have memories of playing with my starter decks with friends and things like that. Yu-Gi-Oh is still a great thing and has been highly successful over the years. I just think that Charizard still has the upper hand in a widespread/mainstream appeal that goes beyond what it once was compared to something like Blue-Eyes. Right now things have really gone back to ‘normal’, so in the long-term a lot could still change with both TCGs and the collector market in each. Probably now would be the time to get a Blue-Eyes if you need it to complete a 1st Ed vintage set.
Yugioh has and always will be a game that’s mostly played, not collected. Games that are all about playing just don’t seem like they truly ever catch on in the broader collecting market imo.
I started playing in its first year of release and in its second set (Metal Raiders). Virtually no one was interested in preserving their cards. I mean the game was all about Duel Monsters - hence huge focus on dueling and trying to beat your opponent like Yugi vs Kaiba. You were either a very casual player or a very hardcore player - but there’s one thing you weren’t and that was a collector.
Today there’s a small group of us collectors that mostly played back in the day. I don’t see a lot of new people coming in that didn’t grow up with it.
As a side note, hunting raw mint cards from the first era is rough. You can’t find a damn thing unless you go graded. The raw market is mostly gone. Think a lot of that is from the playing vs collecting frame of the game. Pretty much nothing sat in binders and it shows.
yugioh players would be fuming to see this title in a pokemon forum
speaking of yugioh, do we know who bought that make-a-wish card?
Indeed. For my collection I am perfectly happy with reprints. My favorite card is all I want in Classic 1st Ed Metal Raiders goodness.
I’m also going to say, the number of YuGiOh arts that really look GREAT are few and far between. Even for the D Magician, you’d think one of the OG mascots, there’d be some particularly great art, but they’re just not anything close to even some common artwork we get in pokemon, LET ALONE MtG. I think this also hurts yuGiOh collecting.
Most yugioh collectors don’t like this broken neck artwork of Blue Eyes. The investors/speculators came in back in 2020 and compared this card to 1st Ed Base Set Charizard, which drove up the price. PSA 10s are still in the 5 figures, but lower grades have less eyes and demand.
As someone who loved Yu-Gi-Oh as a kid (even got the first edition SDK and SDY back in the days), but outgrew it after YGO GX, I think it’s because of two reasons:
There are not so much kids these days loving Yu-Gi-Oh. Back in the days, the anime (at least for me and my friends) was the main driving factor. The characters were iconic and the game was really easy to understand. Today, there is more text on a card than in the Lord of the Rings books, you need an PhD to understand the effects and there is no popular anime. Therefore, not many kids (and in general new players) get into the franchise.
Cards get reprinted a lot. As most of my cards from my childhood were really heavy played, 2 or 3 years ago I decided to buy the most iconic cards in NM conditions (from reprint sets but with the original artworks). I think I bought about 50 cards (including several Blue Eyes, Dark Magicians, the Egyptian Gods, …) and spent somewhere around 50 Euro for it.
And furthermore, as some people already stated, YGO was (compared to Pokemon) always more focused on playing the game and less collecting.
Yu-Gi-Oh is player focused so the market as a whole is a volatile mess and shifts every time the meta changes. Collecting isnt in a majority of players minds so there fore all the high rarity meta playables are always the most expensive to bling out their decks haha.
And Konami loves reprints for accessibility.
It’s not easy to say, but… it’s true.
I actually choose what to play based on how cool the arts are in a potential deck, but generally what ygo does great is only the character design. They almost totally lack that charming painterly side that we have in mtg or pokemon. I still collect yugioh cards only because are strong lol or because I remember winning with them.
It’s surely an art direction choice (maybe Takahashi himself) since they simply give priority to a clear understand of the showcased character in the card even from the distance, during a match, or in the manga/anime. Sure the older cards that we all know are iconic as hell, but non biased people can find them more boring than sugimori copy-paste stock.
