In any hobby that goes on for a long period of time, things start to get expensive.
Ask anybody who has ever gotten deeply obsessed with anything and they’ll tell you that they’ve spent the price of a small house on their hobby, and Yu-Gi-Oh is no different, it’s one of the best trading card games around.
Individual packs are expensive enough, but in those packs, you can get cards that are worth more than the pack itself, or in some rare cases, more than the entire price of 24 different booster packs.
With as many cards as Yu-Gi-Oh has, some cards sit at absolutely obscene prices that even the richest person in the world might scoff at, and we have the full list of the ten most expensive Yu-Gi-Oh cards in the game currently.
10. Monster Reborn – $6,600+
If you know anything about Yu-Gi-Oh, then you’ve heard of Monster Reborn. Along with Blue-Eyes White Dragon, Red-Eyes Black Dragon, and Pot of Greed, Monster Reborn is one of the most iconic cards in the entire game, allowing you to special summon one monster from either player’s graveyard.
It’s so strong that for the longest amount of time it was forbidden, and only relatively recently came off the ban list and was allowed to be played at one copy per deck.
What you’ll notice about the early Yu-Gi-Oh spell cards is that they weren’t called spell cards. They were referred to as magic cards.
This was later changed in the TCG (but not in the anime) for unknown reasons, though several people have speculated that it may have been to avoid the ire of Wizards Of The Coast, especially with the popularity of their card game Magic: The Gathering. This means that this printing of Monster Reborn says ‘Magic Card’ above it, making it even rarer than other printings.
In 2021, a graded ‘10’ (the highest possible grading) copy of the LOB (Legend of Blue-Eyes) Monster Reborn sold for $6,600, making it the tenth most expensive Yu-Gi-Oh card of all time.
It was also a first edition card, meaning it came from the first batch of printings of ANY Yu-Gi-Oh cards.
9. Exodia The Forbidden One – $8,000+
In the last entry, we referred to several cards that you’ll know if you’ve ever watched the anime (a lot of them are cards that you’ll see on this list, too), but we missed out on one key set of cards: The Forbidden One cards.
Those cards are the Exodia cards, five pieces of an ancient being that when brought together have the effect to make you automatically win the game (or if you’re watching the anime, blast your opponent with a massive laser that would surely kill them).
The first printings of these cards were in Legend of Blue-Eyes, with all five pieces of Exodia (Left Leg of the Forbidden One, Right Leg of the Forbidden One, Left Arm of the Forbidden One, Right Arm of the Forbidden One, and Exodia The Forbidden One) being printed as ultra rare cards, making them extremely hard to come across.
In 2020, a graded 10 first-edition copy of Exodia The Forbidden One sold for $8000, selling for a lot more than the other pieces of the forbidden one from this set. It’s interesting to think about how this card has captured the hearts of rare card chasers due to being the first edition of the card, especially considering how much the cards have been reprinted and how easy it is to get your hands on these cards now.
8. Dark Magician Girl – $9,100+
Dark Magician Girl might not be a very powerful card (in fact it was part of the reason that the Dark Magician structure deck didn’t make our list of the best Yu-Gi-Oh Master Duel starter decks), but that didn’t stop it from becoming extremely iconic due primarily to how much it was featured in the original Yu-Gi-Oh anime, and how much that Yugi Muto himself enjoyed playing that card.
The first printing of this card was in 2003, but that comes with a caveat. The first printing of Magician’s Force was only in North America, and wasn’t printed in the rest of the world until October 2005 when Magician’s Force was part of a compilation set known as ‘Master Collection Volume 2’.
The very first printing of this card sold as a PSA Gem Mint 10 first-edition in 2020 and sold for a whopping $9100. What makes this version of the card in particular so sought after (other than being the first printing of the card) is likely the fact that it’s the pre-censored version of the card, meaning that you don’t have to deal with the pretty massive amounts of censorship that the card faced while being brought over to the west.
7. Red-Eyes Black Dragon – $10,700+
Red-Eyes Black Dragon is the ace card, the main card, of Joey Wheeler in the Yu-Gi-Oh anime. Joey Wheeler is the best friend of the main character Yugi Muto, and while he’s not exactly the best duelist in the world, his main card has become one of the most famous cards in Yugioh.
You’ll likely know Joey thanks to his thick Brooklyn accent which is often parodied by fans of the anime.
In 2003, Joey got his own starter deck released titled ‘Starter Deck Joey’, fittingly. This was where most people will have first got their hands on a copy of Red-Eyes Black Dragon, but the first release of Red Eyes Black Dragon was in Legend of Blue-Eyes, the first set ever released in Yu-Gi-Oh.
It was released as one of ten ultra-rare cards in that set, alongside the following cards:
- Blue-Eyes White Dragon
- Dark Magician
- Gaia The Fierce Knight
- Red Eyes Black Dragon
- Monster Reborn
- Right Leg of the Forbidden One
- Left Leg of the Forbidden One
- Right Arm of the Forbidden One
- Left Arm of the Forbidden One
- Exodia the Forbidden One
The first edition of Red Eyes Black Dragon from this set sold for $10,700 in January 2021.
6. Doomcaliber Knight – $15,000+
Shonen Jump decided, after seeing how immensely popular Yu-Gi-Oh was, to make their own championship called the Shonen Jump Championships.
These were tournaments held across North America between 2004 and 2010 in order to find the best players, and they distributed prize cards to any winners of the tournaments.
Seven different card types were given out across seventy-five different tournaments, those cards included beloved cards such as Blue-Eyes White Dragon, Red Eyes Black Dragon, Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon, Toon Dark Magician Girl, The Wicked Eraser, Exodius The Ultimate Forbidden Lord and Doocaliber Knight.
It’s Doomcaliber Knight that we’re talking about now though, as it’s one of the most expensive Yu-Gi-Oh cards of all time.
Doomcaliber Knight was the sixth card to be handed out at a Shonen Jump Championship Series event, with sixty-eight different copies given away between a tournament in Costa Mesa in March 2008, and a tournament in Houston in January 2009.
Doomcaliber knight has an effect that negates the effect of an opponents monster and destroys it, making it a card played competitively at one point in Yu-Gi-Oh history that has just drifted from the mind of players as more and more powerful cards have been released as the years have gone on.
In 3032, a PSA Near-Mint 7 2008 Shonen Jump Championship Series Doomcaliber Knight went for $15,000, and it’s worth keeping in mind that a seven is only the fourth highest grade that a card can actually get. Anything higher than this would likely demand a far higher price.
5. Cyber Stein – $30,000+
Cyber-Stein was the first Shonen Jump Championship prize card that was ever handed out and was handed out in December 2004 and July 2005.
There were nine tournaments held that gave out this card, with the first being held in Anaheim, California, in 2004. There were two copies handed out of Cyber-Stein per tournament, with an extra two given out at the fifth edition of the Shonen Jump Championships themselves. There were also 126 copies released at a February 2009 promotional event entitled Upper Deck Day
Cyber-Stein is a level 2 effect monster that you might have seen played in some strategies revolving around Spright since it can be used as material for Gigantic Spright, and summons any fusion monster from your extra deck at the cost of 5000 LP.
It’s a pretty massive cost, but Yu-Gi-Oh has rapidly changed over the years from being a game all about your life points to being a game where it only matters if you actually have life points in the first place.
In 2020, a PSA Gem Mint 10 copy of the 2004 Shonen Jump Championship Series Cyber-Stein sold for $30,000, with another copy selling for a similar amount that same month. It’s likely that further versions of this card will sell for as much if not more, too.
4. Crush Card Virus – $49,999
Crush Card Virus is yet another example of a card from the Shonen Jump Championship. It’s actually the final card from this championship series on this list and is the one that sold for the most overall.
For those unfamiliar, Crush Card Virus is a card used in the anime by the overall rival of Yugi Muto, Seto Kaiba, and allows you to tribute one monster on your side of the field before destroying the highest attack monsters on your opponent’s side of the field and in their hand, while also looking at their cards.
Card knowledge in Yu-Gi-Oh is a massive deal, making this an immensely powerful card. It was actually banned for quite a while, but thanks to various erratas (changes to how the card itself works), you’re now able to play three copies of it in your deck.
But enough of a history lesson on this card, you’re here to find out why it costs so much. This version of Crush Card Virus was the fourth Shonen Jump Championship series prize card, with forty copies made and handed out at ten championships between January and July 2007.
Overall, there are only around 46 copies of this version of Crush Card Virus available to the general public, and it’s rarely been seen as available on any selling platform.
The Shonen Jump Championship Series Crush Card Virus variant sold for $49,999 in June 2020 at a PSA Gem Mint 10 rating. It’s one of only two overall sales for this card, with the card being so rare that people have sought it out for years and just not found it. It’s unlikely that we’ll see a listing for this card again anytime soon too, making that 2020 sale one for the ages.
3. Dark Magician – $10,000+
The ultimate wizard in terms of attack and defense is also one of the ultimate top three most expensive Yu-Gi-Oh cards of all time! The Dark Magician is a card that is famous thanks to being Yugi Muto’s ace monster, and a monster that can seemingly pull him even from the depths of the most unwinnable places (well, it’s either that or Yugi cheats and makes up rules as he goes along, but hey when has that ever happened?).
The first printing of Dark Magician in the Yu-Gi-Oh TCG was in Legend of Blue-Eyes as one of the Ultra Rare cards, but it’s not the version that you might think of that is up there as one of the overall most expensive Yu-Gi-Oh cards of all time.
No, that goes to a red variant of the card. This card was introduced in episode 60 of the original anime, with Arkana owning a copy of Dark Magician with a slight red tinge.
Yugi obviously eventually overcomes his opponent in order to ultimately win the duel, as he does in every duel, but that variant of the card is stuck in the memories of fans. One PSA Gem Mint 10 First-Edition of the Red Variant from the Legend Of Blue-Eyes Set sold for a massive $85,000 back in June 2021.
The iconic purple Dark Magician is still worth a pretty penny if you have the right version of the card, though. A version of the card that came with an old Game Boy Color game called Dark Duel Stories was accompanied by six prismatic secret rare cards, which included:
- Exodia The Forbidden One
- Dark Magician
- Blue Eyes White Dragon
- Acid Trap Hole
- Seiyaryu
- Salamandra
The Dark Magician from this game sold at $10,000 with a PSA Gem Mint 10.
2. Blue-Eyes White Dragon – $85,000+
We’ve finally made it to one of the most famous cards in Yu-Gi-Oh history, if not the most famous card in the entire game. The Blue-Eyes White Dragon was a card played by Seto Kaiba as his ace monster and boasts an impressive 3000 attack, making it one of the strongest Yu-Gi-Oh cards in the game as of its release.
It’s a card that pretty constantly threatens to destroy Yugi and his friends and a card that fittingly saw its first TCG release with the 2002 set Legend Of Blue Eyes, named after the fearsome dragon that’s described as a ‘powerful engine of destruction.’
In this set it was printed as an Ultra Rare card, making this one of the rarest Yu-Gi-Oh cards of all time. The version that sold though isn’t the art you might recognize from the anime.
That art was printed in Starter Deck Kaiba, and as with the original Dark Magician art, it was one of the six cards given out as part of the Yu-Gi-Oh Dark Duel Stories game launch. A version of this card sold for $25,100 in February 2021 as a PSA Gem Mint 10 grading, but that’s not the most expensive version of this card.
No, the most expensive version of this card is from Legend Of Blue Eyes itself. A PSA Gem Mint 10 First-Edition 2002 LOB Blue-Eyes White Dragon sold in October 2020 for $85,000.
Really makes you think about how much money Kaiba cheated Yugi’s grandpa out of when he tore that card in two during the first episode of the original anime, huh? Maybe if Kaiba hadn’t done that he wouldn’t have had to deal with a very angry pre-pubescent teenage boy and his equally angry (and annoying) friends for the rest of his life.
Maybe he could have lived a normal life instead of dying aboard a space station while trying to fight a pharaoh who had been sent back to Ancient Egypt. Man, Yu-Gi-Oh was weird.
1. Tyler The Great Warrior – $135,000+
Tyler The Great Warrior is unique in this list. It isn’t rare because it’s an old card, or because it’s a special rarity of card. No, Tyler The Great Warrior is so expensive and rare due to the fact it is the only version of itself in existence. It’s a card that’s unique in that nobody else can ever have one other than the current owner.
In 2002, a 14-year-old Yu-Gi-OH player was diagnosed with a rare form of liver cancer. News of this diagnosis got to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, which allowed him to make any wish that he wanted. He wanted to make his own Yu-Gi-Oh card and Make A Wish made that happen thanks to contacts at 4Kids Entertainment, who handled the Yu-Gi-Oh anime for a long time.
Tyler created his own card called Tyler, The Great Warrior, with the design based on Future Trunks, a swordsman from Dragon Ball. He even got a custom effect that applies effect damage to your opponent based on the attack points of the monsters it destroys, similar to Elemental Hero Flame Wingman.
It actually released rather close to the first printing and appearance of Elemental Hero Flame Wingman, which has raised the question over the years of which card came first: Tyler The Great Warrior or Elemental Hero Flame Wingman?
Tyler survived his fight with cancer, keeping hold of the card for years. He’s only recently decided to sell it so that he can fund his future, and is doing so through eBay with the help of a Yu-Gi-Oh YouTuber (or YugiTuber) called Cimooooo, who released a video explaining the history behind the card and what exactly it all meant.
A bid for this card started in April of 2023 and as of the time of writing this list is sitting at $135,100. There are still nine full days left to go on the auction as well, with the auction not ending until the very end of April, meaning this number could easily go up and in fact, probably will go up a great deal over the course of the next few days.
It’s likely to be one of the most expensive TCG cards ever printed thanks to its unique nature that it is and the fact that it is the ONLY printing of this card, meaning that the quality or the grading of the card doesn’t really matter. If you want this card, then this is your ONLY chance to get it.
The most expensive Yu-Gi-Oh cards tend to shift, with cards constantly increasing in price and decreasing thanks to supply and demand. But most cards are unlikely to ever cost as much as the cards already in this list, with these cards only ever going up in price and wanted more and more by rare Yu-Gi-Oh card hunters.
