Screw The Rules, these Yu-Gi-Oh cards cost money.
If you think Yu-Gi-Oh is only an anime about kids who love to d-d-d-d-duel, then wait until you see how crazy valuable the actual cards are. While the anime and manga were popular during their time ? the cards have outlasted them. Not only that, but they have actually grown in value as the years go on!
Based on Kazuki Takahashi?s 1996 manga of the same name, the Yu-Gi-Oh trading card game has soared to great heights since its launch in 1999. The game has sold over 25.2 billion cards worldwide, which explains why the Guinness Book of World Records named it the top-selling trading card game in 2009. To this day, the franchise has spawned multiple anime series, three movies, over 50 video games, and even spin-offs.
It?s no wonder that the most elusive Yu-Gi-Oh cards command prices far beyond anything you could imagine ? unless you?re an avid collector then this comes as no surprise to you. And if you?ve seen our rarest Magic cards and Pokemon cards blogs, even you might be surprised at how much some of these cards are worth.
For those who have more money than an Egyptian pharaoh, below we have chronicled the world?s priciest Yu-Gi-Oh cards. May the heart of the cards guide you and your wallet if you want to buy any of these. You?ll need pockets deeper than the shadow realm to get some of them.
10: First Edition Black Rose Dragon Ghost Rare
Ghost rare cards are tricky to find and dilute the colors of the cards they appear as. Not to be mistaken for ultra rares (which maintain their usual colors) ? ghost rares make their art seem? well, ghostly! A few of these ghost rares have a high value. Chief among them is the First Edition Black Rose Dragon. This floral dragon looks white in its Ghost Rare version or, when tilted, rainbow, as opposed to the bright red petals of the standard card.
The standard card isn?t worth much ? but a First Edition Black Rose Ghost Rare? In mint condition, they can sell for as much as $3,500.
9: Ultra Rare Needle Worm (TP3?001)
Tournament packs are hard to come by, any collector knows this. They are only distributed at tournaments as either prize packs or participation prizes ? and they have been replaced by packs of different names over the years. The Tournament Packs were the first of their kind before they were phased out for other types of reward packs. These limited sets usually contain 20 to 30 cards, and each pack contains three of them. Your odds of getting an Ultra Rare card are much higher than the average pack because of the small set size. It also means there was a much shorter run of these cards than standard ? given they only were available through sanctioned tournaments.
Getting your hands on the Ultra Rare from any of these sets is sure to net you some cash, but the Ultra Rare Needle Worm from Tournament Pack 3 is the top contender. This prickly worm is worth a staggering $4,000!
8: Chinese V Jump, January 2000 issue, Blue-Eyes White Dragon
It was hard to know back in the early 2000s that Yu-Gi-Oh would become as popular as it has. It would have been even harder to predict how much the cards would one day be worth. So when V Jump ? a popular Manga magazine ? provided a Blue-Eyes White Dragon card to their Chinese readers, many people thought little of it. Most of these cards were lost, or misplaced ? which is part of why the cost is so high today.
The remaining cards, if you somehow managed to snag one, are worth a lot of money. One recently sold for a staggering $5,000.
7: First Edition Blue-Eyes White Dragon (LOB-001)
Via. WorthPoint
Blue-eyes white dragon is a mythic figure in Yu-Gi-Oh lore. The cards continue to keep this character as a mythic figure by releasing holographic Ultra Rare versions of the dragon. If you pulled one from a pack when the set first came out ? and kept it in pristine condition, you could be sitting on a blue-eyed gold mine.
Heavy Play cards can go for as little as $200 ? but cards with a high PSA grade are highly coveted by collectors. To get your hands on this legendary dragon in mint condition? Expect to pay up to $5,600.
6: Promo Cyber Stein
Via. CollectorsCache
While common variants of this card exist, the rare promo version of Cyber Stein was given to winners of the Shonen Jump Championship. Like many championship cards ? very few are known to exist. Because of this, you can?t expect to find them at your local card shop (unless you?re very, very lucky). Instead, you?ll have to go to sites like eBay and hope.
We?d sacrifice 5000 LP to get our hands on the promo version. The Shonen Jump Championship Cyber Stein recently sold for about $7,000.
5: Armament of the Lethal Lords
Armament of the Lethal Lords is unsurprisingly another card awarded to winners of the World Championship Series in 2006, but what is surprising is the original asking price of this rarity. Sellers made headlines by looking to sell the card for over a million dollars, which is a number only achieved by the likes of the infamous Honus Wagner baseball card.
Even if it never quite sold for those astronomical amounts, Armament of the Lethal Lords has still been sold for as much as $9,000 to date.
4: Iron Knight of Revolution
Via. Yu-Gi-Oh Wikia
Thought you?d seen the last World Championship card? Think again. This time the card comes out of the 2017 championship. This incredible card brings to mind out of control AI ? but we are very much in control of our desires. Mainly because we can?t afford them!
This card is incredibly rare ? due to its status as a World Championship prize, so don?t expect to secure one with a well-placed trap card. The last time we saw one of these hit the market ? it sold for a staggering $12,999!
3: Amatsu-Okami Of the Divine Peaks
Via. Yu-Gi-Oh Wikia
This card is yet another World Championship winners card, this time from 2018. You?d think that the older cards have more value ? and they might, but we haven?t seen any sell in so long that we can only guess. This card is as legendary as the dragon depicted on it. It?s the rarity of World Championship cards that drive up their value.
We don?t expect you to have one of these hiding in your collection (we?re pretty sure you?d know if you were a World Champion Winner), but if you want to own one, get ready to spend a small fortune. We have only seen one sell, and it went for a staggering $18,800.
2: Armored Blue-Eyes White Dragon
Armored Blue-Eyes White Dragon is a legend in the truest sense of the word. It?s literally unknown if this card is even real, as conflicting sources on the internet both confirm and deny its existence. All we know ? is that we don?t know for sure. In-depth research yields no further results.
If the stories are to be believed, obtaining this card will cost the buyer in excess of $500,000. However, considering how elusive this card has become over the years, we wouldn?t be surprised if a buyer would be forking over even more cash for this mythical card. If it truly exists at all.
1: Tournament Black Luster Soldier
With most top ten lists, we see increasingly rare items stack on top of each other until we award the number 1 spot to a product that somehow trumps everything else on the list. However, with Yu-Gi-Oh?s Tournament Black Luster Soldier, the disparity between the value of this card with everything else on the list will strike even our longtime readers as totally unbelievable.
This one-of-a-kind trading card was given to the winner of the very first Yu-Gi-Oh tournament held in Japan in 1999, and the card itself was printed on stainless steel instead of the usual cardboard and foil. This fantastic Black Luster Soldier has a value of ? brace yourself ? roughly $10 million. While reports indicate that the card may have been sold for closer to $2 million, the fact that a card could command such a high price, to begin with, is a testament to its rarity among collectibles worldwide.
Make no mistake; this card isn?t merely the most expensive Yu-Gi-Oh trading card. Rather, Black Luster Soldier is one of the most valuable trading cards of all time.
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