Yu-Gi-Oh! is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Kazuki Takahashi. The series follows Yugi Mutou, a teenager who solves the ancient Egyptian Millennium Puzzle. As the manga progresses, the focus largely shifts to the card game Duel Monsters.

The popularity challenge, in regards to Pokemon TCG, is that there is basically zero high-end collector interest in the game after The Shining Darkness in 2010, until Rising Rampage in 2019. Yugioh has little marketing, no anime or even video games to keep up the interest. It also does not appear that Konami seems not to care that the game has a ridiculous entry cost that many people aren’t willing to do.

Unfortunately, the game suffers from being an ugly, unreadable mess that makes little sense to anyone just trying to watch a game. It’s common that the game suffers from bad balance, where it just ends immediately if the opponent doesn’t have the key card to stop something. Pokemon’s hype will die down eventually, but trying to “catch them all” is much easier to figure out, has colorful characters and the brand ecosystem pulls in new players from non-gamer circles.

Yugioh releases reprints of the previous year’s cards too often. The card value in Yugioh is a lot more dependent on the meta compared to Pokemon. Additionally, Konami has been releasing a lot of rarity collections that have been reprinting very old cards. In summary, the most expensive cards tend to be the ones that appeared in the Anime – the ones I prefer to collect. LOB 1st Edition, GX Ultimates, DDS promos, 5D’s ghost Rares, Blue-eyes, Dark Magician, Stardust Dragon, Black Rose Dragon, Flame Wingman, ect. To grow in popularity, cards need to have hype, personal attachment or nostalgia around them in my eyes. Pokemon has done this extremely-well, by not only having anime, but also games for fans to experience and grow further attached to their products. Many of the cards listed above hold value extremely well, in some cases better than MTG and Pokemon cards, but he big-time investors just don’t seem to be there to inflate the price.

Cartoon Network stopped airing YuGiOh! back in 2010, and GX and 5D’s didn’t even get completed in the English dub. The vast majority of their video games also seemed to be dumbed-down to single-player simulators with few multiplayer options. Sadly, over the years, the brand hasn’t brought much of anything to attract new collectors or players to the game. The massive costs associated have really pushed players towards Pokemon again, because you’re considering a $500 price-point of playing the game competitively, but then paired with metas changing every 3-6 months – you’re looking at massive costs just to get in the game competitively.

Another aspect in ivesting is collectability. In their great wisdom, Konami removed two fan-favorite rarities from main sets forever in Breakers Of Shadows in 2016, ghost rare and ultimate rare. Not only did this completely kill high-end collector interest in their main sets, because there were no longer chase cards in a set, but it also destroyed the value of the cards in the sets as well as sealed product going forward.

Yugioh reprinted cards over and over, which is typically good for collectors and competitive players to lower prices and give different rarities to cards that might be preferred over the original. The problem here is that secret rare, the chase of the set after BOSH, just isn't a coveted, high-end rarity like it used to be. Reprint sets like Premium Pack and Hidden Arsenal were putting secrets in every pack, so you need something higher-rarity than secret to ensure a cards collectible value. Removing ghosts wasn’t a great decision, and moving ultimates to tournament packs makes even less sense. Making what was essentially a fan favorite rarity exclusive to tournament packs, packs that contain only meta cards (with a few exceptions) pushed collectors further away from the hobby sadly.

After COVID, however, it seems as those the Yugioh collector scene has seen somewhat of a revival. Starlight, collector, and the limited return of ghost rare have been extremely well-received and Konami is, for the first time since probably 2010, printing sets that are almost completely aimed at collectors and old school fans; Quarter Century Bonanza, Toon Chaos, and Retro Pack to name a few. I believe they’d done an “ok” job at bringing mid-tier collectors back, but they’ve got a long way to go until we see big money investors like we did when Pokemon brought back 151.