The 26 most expensive Yugioh cards and prices

A one-of-a-kind Yugioh card, created by Tyler Gressle in 2005 as part of a Make-a-Wish request, Tyler the Great Warrior has the honor of being the rarest Yugioh card in existence, with only one copy around. Gressle designed the card in 2005, when he was 14, and battling against a rare form of liver cancer.

18 years later, he decided to sell the card. The final auction bid racked up a whopping $311,211 (£249,793.51), meaning yes, this is officially number one. We present to you: the rarest and most expensive Yugioh card ever, full stop.

This valuable card is a wonderful memento of the Make-a-Wish Foundation’s work, as well as Tyler’s own journey. However, while we don’t resent Tyler for selling the card, it feels a bit strange to know such a sentimental card is stowed away in a stranger’s private collection.

Gemini Elf was first printed in 1999. Its attack value of 1900 immediately made it the best level-four normal monster in the game, completely replacing Mechanicalchaser in the meta. Although it’s an unplayable card today, it was a landmark card in early Yugioh – which is probably why it was chosen to be the fourth prize card in the 2001 Asian Championships.

The Asian Championships was a tournament held in Japan and only open to players in the Asian nations that had access to the OCG – remember, this was a year before the Trading Card Game was released in North America and the rest of the world. All five prize cards featured alternate artwork, a first for the game.

As well as its high price, this Gemini Elf is one of the most valuable Yugioh cards for sentimental reasons. At the Asian Championships, they were also presented by Kazuki Takahashi, the creator of Yugioh himself!

On May 8 2024, trading card seller Vintage Card Japan announced via Twitter that it had sold the card privately for 40 million yen, roughly $254,791 by the exchange rate at the time. It’s still only a Gemini Elf, but it’s the most storied Gemini Elf ever printed.

Blue-Eyes White Dragon might be the most popular Yugioh card of all time, even if it isn’t the rarest. A heavyweight both in the early days of the trading card game and the original anime series, it’s still sought after today, especially if it’s an ultra-rare mint-condition copy, like this one.

Released in the Yugioh trading card game’s first expansion set, Legend of Blue-Eyes White Dragon (LOB), this first-edition PSA 10 Gem Mint condition card sold at auction in October 2020 for an astounding $85,000 (£65,000). That’s a whole lot of dough, but you’ll need three of them to summon the chunkier Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon.

Other copies of the card don’t go cheap, either. Back in June 2021, a Chinese court suspended an auction after bidding spiralled up to a wild $13.4 million / £10.1 million, as people clambered to get their hands on an ultra-rare Blue-Eyes White Dragon with a 20th-anniversary card frame.

Another staple of the Yugioh anime and trading card game, Dark Magician is best known as the favorite card of protagonist Yugi Muto. And with that fame comes expense, as a PSA 10 gem mint condition copy of the card, printed in the Legend of Blue-Eyes White Dragon set, was auctioned in June 2021 for $85,000 (£65,000).

Notably, this particularly valuable Yugioh card was the Arkana variant of Dark Magician. Functionally, it’s exactly the same card, but includes a different artwork with a crimson hue and was introduced in the anime as a rival to Yugi Muto’s version of the card.

Awarded as a prize card in the 2007 Shonen Jump Championships (a series of Yugioh trading card game tournaments that were later replaced by the Yugioh Championship Series), there aren’t many copies of this version of Crush Card Virus around. Originally, 40 copies of the rare Yugioh card were produced, before a further two were made for the SJC 2008 tournaments.

It’s the scarcity of this card that makes it so valuable to collectors, more so than its functionality or popularity. In June 2020, a PSA 10 gem mint copy sold for $49,999 (£40,058.70) on eBay. Not bad for a card that’s spent most of its life sitting on the Yugioh banlist (until Konami rewrote its rules).

An ultra-rare variant of Minerva, The Exalted Lightsworn was awarded as the first prize for national events in the 2015 Yugioh World Championship Series. The distinction between this version and the cards given out for second and third place is very subtle: the golden lettering is all that separates it from its kindred.

One such card with an excellent condition score of 9.5 sold via Heritage Auctions on November 6 2021 for $34,800, followed in March 2022 with a 9.0 condition card that moved for $31,200. While Minerva might not matter much in the meta these days, she’s earned her place among the most expensive Yugioh cards ever printed.

Back when the GX anime first aired on American TV, Konami partnered up with toy maker Mattel to release a range of action figures. Available only from Sears stores, each toy was a popular Yugioh summon, and the packs came with a limited edition version of that monster’s card. However, midway through the third series of toys, the accompanying ‘MF03’ series of cards was pulled from the product.

This meant that cards for monsters released towards the end of the run had particularly short supply, none more so than MF03-009 Cyber Dragon. For many years this promo card was practically a myth: although it was listed in official guides to published cards, there were no photos of it in the wild.

That was until 2020, when redditor loserchris (real name Kevin, no surname given) shared the news on the r/yugioh subreddit that he had found several MF03 series cards in his closet, saying “I don’t even remember where I got them”. The community was flabbergasted that an MF03-009 was finally found among them.

Kevin sold the Cyber Dragon via an auction on the YGOrganization Discord, and confirmed to Wargamer that he received a tidy $30,500 for the card.

This copy of Cyber-Stein was originally awarded as a prize card at the Shonen Jump Championships between 2004 and 2005. Only 18 copies of the valuably Yugioh card were produced for the tournaments, although an extra two were printed for the tournaments in 2008, and 126 copies were made for a promotional event in 2009.

Regardless of its reprints, this is still a rare Yugioh card. A PSA 10 gem mint condition copy printed in the original 2004 auctioned in October 2020 for $30,100 (£22,800).

This little insect doesn’t have much renown in the TCG community, but it managed to make a name for itself as a valuable Yugioh card in August 2021. A rare promo version of the card, released alongside the Dark Duels Stories Game Boy cartridge, that had been rated in PSA 10 gem mint condition sold on eBay for a whopping $29,999.99 (£22,700) on that date.

At the time of its listing, it was billed as the only gem mint copy of the promo card in the entire world, making it somewhat unique. Since then, however, trading card authenticator and grading company PSA has listed three other copies of the card.

The Seal of Orichalcos has appeared in several Yugioh sets, but that wasn’t always the case. When it made its first appearance in season four of the Yugioh anime in 2005, it had no paper counterpart. Upper Deck Entertainment decided to make their own custom version of the card. This rare Yugioh card appeared only in UDE-organised “Duel the Master” side-events at tournaments: challenge games against a master player, usually a judge, wielding a stacked deck full of powerful cards.

The Seal of Orichalcos isn’t really a promo, since it wasn’t intended to make its way into the hands of players, and was never legal in any form of tournament play. This version of the card has an ominous final clause – if you lose against its owner, your soul is forfeit! Legend has it that only fifteen copies of the card were ever printed, suggesting it is one of the rarest cards in any TCG.

In 2017, Yu-Gi-Oh! collector Anthony Nguyen released a YouTube video revealing he’d acquired a copy of the legendary card. Once it became apparent that it was possible for collectors to get their hands on it, there were a spate of sales – with a 7-graded copy selling via Heritage Auctions for $26,400.

Another entry for the pallid serpent, this was one of six Prismatic Secret Rare cards released in promotion for the Yugioh Dark Duel Stories videogame. Two sets were created and were packaged inside the Gameboy game. One set contained ol’ Blue-Eyes, Exodia, and Dark Magician; the other had Acid Trap Hole, Seiyaryu, and Salamandra.

This PSA 10 gem mint condition copy sold at auction in February 2021 for the not-insignificant sum of $25,100 (£19,000). Although a fair few prismatic Blue-Eyes White Dragons made their way into the world as promo cards for the videogame, few have been kept in such great condition. Only these pristine few will rank among the most expensive Yugioh cards in history.

Similar to Minerva, the Exalted Lightsworn, Chaos Emperor was a prize at the 2018 Yugioh Championship series. Championship winners were the first to get their hands on the powerful dragon, two years before its first public printing in Battles of Legend Armageddon.

While it requires a lot of reading, this expensive Yugioh card has some pretty explosive effects. Wipe out your opponent’s board and their life points with a unique monster effect, or play to either pendulum zone to retrieve another dragon from your graveyard. A copy of the ultra-rare first-place winner’s card with a PSA Mint 9 rating sold via Heritage auctions for $18,000 in November 2021.

This very valuable Yugioh card went for $17,000 in a 2024 sale on the auction site Goldin. A promo card from 2004, Card of Sanctity’s rarity is easy to explain. The card was given away by Kids WB as part of a promotion for the Yugioh anime. Instructions to enter a sweepstakes were given out in the episode Back to Battle City Part 3.

100 kids in the US won these special copies of Card of Sanctity, and promptly stuffed them into drawers, traded them away on the playground, bent them, tore them, or left them outside in the rain. The $17,000 copy we spotted only had a PSA 8 Near Mint grade, but that’s not exactly important when there are basically no higher-quality versions of the card available.

It’s worth noting that the real card is a lot worse functionally than it was in the anime, where it made each player draw up to six cards in their hand.

Another rare Yugioh card given out at the Shonen Jump Championships, this copy of Doomcaliber Knight was handed to winners of the 2008 tournaments. Only 68 copies of the cards were ever produced, making it not only super scarce, but super coveted.

In March 2021, a PSA 7 near-mint copy of the card was auctioned for $15,300 (£12,258.21). This is one of very few cards on this list that isn’t graded PSA 10 – and since a copy that pristine has never been sold, it’s hard to know if they exist at all. The fact that copies sell for such high prices without a perfect grading goes to show how valuable the card is.

Another promotional card, this copy of Morphing Jar was released in the second season Tournament Pack, a specially-compiled booster that was released at select tournament locations in late 2002. More than that, Morphing Jar was the pack’s single Ultra Rare, making it doubly golden – and a pretty valuable card on the secondary market.

In Early 2021, a PSA 10 gem mint condition copy of the card sold for just under $15,000 (£12,000). Still, we reckon the classic Pot of Greed is the best piece of crockery to ever make its way into Yugioh.

Often, when a trading card gets misprinted, its recipient’s dismay turns to glee when they realize their misshapen playing piece is now an even more valuable Yugioh card. But in the case of Dark Paladin, it’s the ‘correction’ to that misprint that now holds immense value.

The first edition English printing of Dark Paladin from the 2003 Yugioh set Magician’s Force used the incorrect artwork. A version of the card that was intended to be exclusive to an upcoming boxed set.

Upper Deck Entertainment, the distributor for English-language Yugioh cards in the 2000s, corrected the mistake for later editions of the card. However, for some reason it also offered players with the misprinted card a chance to swap their 1st edition Dark Paladins for 1st edition Dark Paladins with the corrected art.

The offer was advertised on Upper Decks website, and in various magazines. But it seems like many fans either didn’t hear about it, didn’t bother to send off for the card, or thought the misprint would be more valuable in the long run. So few copies were put into circulation that now the corrected art version of the Dark Paladin is much rarer and more expensive.

The highest recent price we could find was a PSA-graded gem mint condition copy that sold for $15,000 on Fanatics Collect on May 11, 2021. Props go to the Reddit user AzulRyu who documented this bit of TCG history in exhaustive detail.

Dark Magician Girl was first printed in 2003, in the North-America only set Magician’s Force. Although she’s had a wider reprint since then, this was the only printing to feature the card art used in the Anime.

A gem mint first edition Dark Magician girl sold for $9,100 via eBay in November 2020, while another sold for $13,200 via PWCC marketplace in July 2022. The deck archetype this expensive Yugioh card belongs to no longer sees much success at tournaments, but its rarity and the iconic status of the card keep its value high.

Another championship prize card, Gold Sarcophagus was the prize for national winners in the 2007 Pharoah’s Tour series. The Ultra-Rare variant was awarded to first-place winners. When a PSA 8-graded German-language copy went up for auction in June 2022, it sold for $12,600 – probably because it was the only German-language copy of the card on the market at the time.

Another favorite from Yugioh’s line of vivid drakes with notable eye colors, Red-Eyes Black Dragon doesn’t have the acclaim or market value of its esteemed Blue-eyed counterpart, but can certainly hold its own. One of ten Ultra Rares included in the first Yugioh set release, Legend of Blue-Eyes White Dragon, this card was a prize to find.

Twenty years later, that prize has only gone up in value. A PSA 10 gem mint condition copy of the first-edition card cards for $10,600 (£8,000) in January 2021. Yugioh players sure do like their dragons.

Number 89: Diablosis the Mindhacker was an exclusive card given to Yugioh Championship Series winners in 2017. The average duellist then had to wait four years for it to get a regular release in the 2021 set Brothers of Legend.

Most valuable Yugioh cards are rare but not powerful, but Diablosis is both. Its ability to banish cards from the opponent’s extra deck, graveyard, and the top of their deck made it a disrupting terror in recent times, forcing many players to warp their deck-building process in an effort to counter it.

Fortunately, the aggrieved fans’ prayers were answered when, in June 2023, the card was stuck onto the Yugioh banlist. It found its way to the Yugioh Master Duel banlist soon afterwards, in October.

Getting plenty of play will probably have boosted its market value at least a little, but ultimately it’s the low supply, inherent to any prize card, that has made Diablosis so expensive. According to Heritage Auctions, which oversaw the sale of a copy for $10,500 in September 2022, only nine PSA 10 copies are known to exist.

One of only two Secret Rare cards released in the very first Yugioh set, Gaia the Dragon Champion depicts a terrifying fusion between Gaia the Fierce Knight and Curse of Dragon. Terrifying in appearance, that is; obviously with no abilities and okay stats, this warrior wouldn’t stand a chance in the modern TCG meta.

You might think being one of the two rarest cards in the earliest Yugioh set would be enough to explain Gaia’s high price, with a copy selling on Heritage Auctions for $9,9000 in 2021. However, the other Secret Rare card from the set, Tri-Horned Dragon, commands a pitiful price in comparison, of just a few hundred dollars.

Just like less rare, but far more expensive Legend of Blue Eyes cards such as Dark Magician and Blue-Eyes itself, It seems it’s prestige that accounts for the difference. Gaia the Dragon Champion is a far more popular card than Tri-Horned Dragon, appearing in the anime’s fifth episode, getting more reprints and appearing in more video games than its less appealing horny lizard friend.

Blue-Eyes Shining Dragon is one of nine Secret Rares from Retro Pack 2, with a bit of extra prestige thanks to the Blue-Eyes connection. The original limited edition printing of this card was given to kids who saw the 2004 movie, Yugioh: Pyramid of Light, in theaters. But it’s actually this unlimited reprint from a few years later (2009) that’s most expensive.

That’s because, even though it’s ‘just’ a reprint set, Retro Pack 2 had an extremely low print run and was very hard to get hold of in America. Boxes were released only in Europe, and now easily sell for over $5,000.

Less perfect copies of this exact card can be found online for $1000 – $2000, but the most staggering value we found was a PSA 10 Gem Mint specimen that sold via Fanatics Collect in February 2021 for $9,000.

There’s a funny bit of trivia about this card. You have to tribute Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon, to summon Blue-Eyes Shining Dragon. But the former wasn’t released until almost two years after the latter’s first printing, meaning for a large stretch of time the Shining Dragon was completely unusable. D’oh!

When Magic Formula was printed in the set Gladiator’s Assault 2007, it became a key part of Dark Magician decks, offering power boosts to either Dark Magician or Dark Magician Girl, and a handy life boost should it go to the graveyard. The problem for duellists was getting their hands on it.

Gladiator’s Assault was stuffed with secret rare cards and had a legendarily bad ratio of rare cards to commons and uncommons. Magic Formula was incredibly scarce, and copies from that first printing are still highly sought after: a gem mint Gladiator’s Assault Magic Formula sold for $8,700 on PWCC marketplace in July 2022.

The notorious Exodia is just as prized on the collector’s market as it is by duelists in the Yugioh anime. It’s the ultimate monster, created by combining five Exodia cards into a single, unmatched entity: the Forbidden One. It’s so powerful, in fact, that it grants its summoner immediate victory. No wonder that sniveling Weevil Underwood threw all of Yugi’s Exodia cards off the boat in the first season.

This copy of Exodia is particularly prized, however, for being a first-edition version that was printed in the game’s original set from 2002, Legend of Blue-Eyes White Dragon. It sold for $8,000 (£6,050). As well as being graded at PSA 10 Mint Gem condition, all five cards that make up Exodia were released as Ultra Rares, making them difficult to find regardless of their age.

In addition to being one of the most expensive Yugioh cards ever sold, the Attack of the Giant Card!! Cyber Dragon is also one of the biggest. ‘Attack of the Giant Card!!’ is an official tournament that rewards its winner with a Yugioh card that’s around a meter tall.

According to an eBay listing, this giant Cyber Dragon was awarded at the Remote Duel Extravaganza in June 2022 as part of the Attack of the Giant Card!! Speed Duel tournament. Though we don’t know the official offer accepted, the seller’s OG asking price was just under $10,000 (£9,000) – so the final price is somewhere in this eye-watering ballpark.

Believed to have been awarded in Yugioh’s first-ever national tournament in 1999, this curious card might be the most expensive Yugioh card of all time. Made of stainless steel, the unique one-of-a-kind Black Luster Soldier monster works differently to every other version of the card – since it’s a Normal Monster, not a Ritual Monster.

According to Kotaku, the card was listed for sale for around $10 million back in 2013, but there’s no indication it sold for that value. Elsewhere, a figure of $2 million is widely circulated, but this does not seem to have a verifiable source attached.

The above image is not the metal monster, but a paper duplicate of the card. 3,000 copies were released in June 2023 as a special promotion in Japan, to mark the 25th anniversary of the game.