Yu-Gi-Oh! Legend of Blue Eyes White Dragon booster case sells for $584,000, setting a new record for the TCG
Sealed boxes of first-edition packs for 2002 US release potentially include some of the game's rarest cards.
A sealed first-edition case of booster packs for one of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game’s most valuable sets has sold for a record-breaking amount at auction.
The Legend of Blue Eyes White Dragon booster case includes 12 boxes - each with 24 booster packs inside - dating from the 2002 US release of the card game’s first set, named after the series’ iconic monster.
Legend of Blue Eyes White Dragon, often abbreviated to LOB, is one of Yu-Gi-Oh!’s most sought-after sets. The full set of 126 cards includes several of the rarest Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, including the first printing of the Exodia set - a group of five cards that collectively form the Forbidden One, which grants an automatic victory in duels. Other popular cards in LOB include the titular Blue-Eyes White Dragon, Dark Magician, Pot of Greed and Monster Reborn, all of which may appear in the nine-card booster packs.
The sealed first-edition LOB booster case went under the hammer earlier this month as part of US auction house Goldin Auctions’ first comics, video games and TCG event. As well as Yu-Gi-Oh! items, the auction included a number of rare Pokémon cards - including the sale of a 24-karat Pikachu card released for the game’s 20th anniversary - and a set of trophy cards for the Dragon Ball Super Card Game.
Goldin said that the LOB booster case’s “sheer rarity” led it to verify the set by opening it to examine the contents. Goldin consignment director Jared Mast previously told Dicebreaker of the process involved, resulting from a rise in counterfeit cards - also known as proxies - that have impacted the market for valuable Yu-Gi-Oh! cards.
“We just had a Yu-Gi-Oh! Legend of Blue Eyes, first-edition case,” Mast said at the time. “Those don't exist. Maybe once every five years, they turn up. So what I did is I had the experts in Yu-Gi-Oh! come in and open it, which usually you would not do because it's unopened and it's original. But because it is something where it is highly faked and there are proxies, especially with Yu-Gi-Oh!, that is one of those things where we're on top of it, we do the best we can.”
The outside of the first-edition case was said to have “very minor wear consistent with standard storage and shelf life”, with the cards inside the booster packs considered to “presumably [be] in NM-MT or better condition” as a result.
The sealed, first-edition Yu-Gi-Oh! Legend of Blue Eyes White Dragon booster case eventually sold for $584,250 - setting a new all-time record for any Yu-Gi-Oh! item sold at auction, according to Goldin.