Last March, trading card collectors were startled when rare uncut sheets of Yu-Gi-Oh cards began to emerge across market sites like eBay and Facebook. The cards appeared to be legitimate, but the strange behavior from the seller began raising a lot of questions about how they were acquired. A new report from 404 Media attempts to discover the identity of this phantom duel master.
Journalist Matthew Gault managed to make contact with the seller and his first buyer, the latter and more responsive party going by Nick. Nick says that $1,000 for an uncut sheet of Blue Eyes Silver Dragon was a steal, though a lot about the listing didn’t add up. “At the time, I assumed he had won it from a tournament,” Nick told 404. “I assumed it was obtained legitimately.”
It isn’t unheard of for uncut cards or misprints to be sent out erroneously. The rare and heightened value can be tempting for stores that get sent them by mistake. Generally it’s not worth the fury from a litigious Konami, who could cut off their supply or bar stores from hosting tournaments. While the seller’s photo documentation wasn’t stellar, a series of posts gave collectors a fuller picture of the trove. Nick estimates the haul could amount to a million dollars in sales, done carefully. The seller seldom gave consistent answers, often unresponsive and sometimes having his mother step in, but one detail seemed locked in: He found them in the trash.
“Man I’ve made over $60,000 off these f****** Yu-Gi-Oh cards out of the trash,” the seller wrote in a Facebook post. “I’m fixing to go take a video of where I got these hoes from and let you hold it on that now you all pay the premium price.”
From what 404 could gather, including details about the seller’s mother and statements from friends, the cards were likely discovered in Dallas, Texas, near a factory belonging to Cartamundi. Cartamundi is one of the printing companies contracted by Konami, who typically outsources the manufacturing of these lucrative pieces of paper.
Over the last decade, the rising popularity of trading card games and the collection frenzy since the pandemic has turned many hobbies into a sideshow. As secondary market values rise, so do profit-seekers, creating a surreal black market for Pokémon and Lego.
The lucky but illustrious Yu-Gi-Oh seller has been confounding collectors for over a month, listing, unlisting, re-listing, teasing and generally shit disturbing with his lucrative find. “F****** stupid f***,” posted the seller, “I bet don’t know you hoes getting none of this s***.”
