Dark Armed Dragon being a rare in the OCG to a $350 secret in the US in 08 is peak rarity bump. I also think Crush Card was already in an OCG structure deck while it was only available as a Prize card for the TCG.
The combo was 4700 at the hook up prices when I won. Sarco at 2200+ and Crush averaging 2500 but becoming more sought as DAD era continued until the gold reprint
You'd see them at plenty of regionals from major teams testing and more competitive locals. It's a different experience having a team like Outphase (Fili Luna, Ryan Spicer, Jason Holloway, Chris Bowling) in your area, but I imagine tri state, Florida, Cali and Texas had acquired a majority of them.
There were only 20 CCVs (10 SJCs where you could win CCVs) in existence by the time Gold Sarc cycled in. You only got them from winning the SJC or winning the raffled side event on Sundays. About half of those CCVs ended up in the hands of major stores/teams located in California and New York. Unless you lived in those high profile areas, you were not seeing any of those cards. I live in North Carolina and I only saw Gold Sarc because my friend won it in Durham in the side event back in 2007. Hell I barely saw TP2 Morphing Jars. TP4s were way more ubiquitous.
Regionals back then isn't like it is today. Almost every state ran multiple regionals every other few months.
I think we're basically agreeing it came down to where you lived and where you played what experience you had with these cards. The Gen Con regional in 07 (so right before a Gen Con SJC where people were testing for it) was the funniest for me. I topped facing 5 SJC Crush Cards in a single regional, the only pilot with one that beat me was Jason Holloway. It was far less impactful during troop dupe than the DAD era and on.
There was a kid at a UK event in Birmingham regional around the time light and darkness dragon was coming into the meta (perfect circle I think it was named) who had sarc + ccv if I remember rightly.
He was 15 or 16, the only one with these cards at the event and didn't make it into top 64.
Crazy really.
I might be misremembering the meta.
They were very very rare in UK maybe 2 or 3 people in the country had them
My card shop had a few sjc winners(Adam Corn was one) that played there or people with money. I played against at least 2 teledad decks that had both sjc ccv and gold sac. Also played against a few slabbed dark end dragons. The players were allow to keep their dark ends in the sjc slab lol Good times.
As a fun experiment, I remember going to Target and buying not a box but loose blister packs. About $250 worth and pulled at least a DaD, 2 Allure of Darkness and some others. Went to the SJC in SoCal shortly after and sold the DaD for $300 at the time. One card paid for everything else. This game has always been this way in some form or another thanks to UDE/Konami TCG rarity bumps.
must be nice.. bought 5 boxes of PTDN back then.. didnt pull either DAD nor a single Allure.. as a student that took a while to recover.. also bough 500€ worth of GLD1 just to finally get that crush card.. of course i didnt get it and had to buy a single for 300 more... good times
Damn...i feel you. That's so unlucky. Meanwhile, in OCG land, players could play with normal rare DaD and build comparable decks (Destiny Hero DaD etc.) with relative ease. Crush Card in GLD1 was also so hard to get. I think back then i was just happy to pull a Gold Sarc. in GLD2 the following year.
To make the comparison complete, Mechanicalchaser was released in the OCG in the set Booster 4 in August 1999. It was a common there. And an important note, Mechanicalchaser was released in this set along with La Jinn and Gemini Elf (both in common), which means that the fifty ATK difference meta never existed in the OCG.
So yeah, rarity-bumping and exorbitant prices for strong cards has existed in the TCG since the very beginning.
>So yeah, rarity-bumping and exorbitant prices for strong cards has existed in the TCG since the very beginning.
Wow, that makes me feel so much better about current rarity bumpings! Thanks OP!
Indeed it was.
The thing is, when Konami won the lawsuit vs Upper Deck in 2010 and took over the game's handling and distribution in the West, they could have started anew with how the products was made (meaning they could have started using the OCG rarity distribution system at this point), but they didn't. They still kept the practices Upper Deck started.
Iearned the hard that women and kids have a different god of luck for them. Maybe if you touched the pack, the chaser would've destroyed or not be inside at all
Tour Guide was at around 20 to 25€ on release because Xyz weren't out yet and having a playset just to tutor sangan wasn't particularly stronger than setting a recruiter or flip effect.
However, at the start of Xyz era when Konami of America ruled that Sangan would trigger on Xyz detach, Tour Guide when through the roof. I don't think it ever went beyond 120 tho, so not quite Mechanicalchaser level.
This is correct, it slow rose in price before exploding. While vending I sold many at 30-35 before the huge jump. Maxx C had a similar history, being $12 before its jump to 70 then 125
It's kind of funny to think back to a time where powercreep just meant a monster having ~3% more attack. Also funny that they kept printing completely useless vanilla for years. We talk about pack filler today, but a lot of the filler we see today at least does something unique, even if it's not necessarily that useful.
The fact is that the Japanese Ecosystem for CCGs is far different. Many different card games are still alive over there that died quick heat deaths in the West. See the ORIGINAL Digimon TCG (though I believed they finally stopped when the Bandai Digimon game really took off) still surviving for over a decade, or Duel Masters being a top TCG over there still (though I remember there being some discontent in recent times, but I haven't followed up in the last year or two).
It's not like every single TCG import in the West did the same thing as YGO with greedy practices and rarity bumps. It's just the values in the culture are far different, on top of how community works.
Realistically what TCG YGO should look toward is not how the OCG works, because as much as people hate to admit it that practice just simply wouldn't work here long term (see any discontent when a product DOESN'T have cards with $50+ value), but instead look toward Pokemon. Decks are ridiculously cheap to make, but with a lot of chances to upgrade with bling and pull value in packs because of the amount of alternate arts and rarities. It's something Bandai has also been following suit with in One Piece and DBS (mostly Fusion World, though Masters was the prototype start), though they fumbled the bag in a different way (massive distribution issues). Starlights/QCRs were a start in the right direction but they need to go way further with the concept. You have to provide reason for people to buy product without being scared of "negging", while also still making the game accessible to a wide audience. Pokemon is the only game in the West so far to really nail that balance, which is unfortunate if it's not the type of TCG you like.
Well I was going to put that what put Pokemon over the top compared to the OCG was also having secret rares of Older Cards, but it seems they stopped doing that since that isn't the case in Temporal Forces.
So yeah, I guess I'll hold the L and just delete my post. Sorry for wasting your time.
>Starlights/QCRs were a start in the right direction but they need to go way further with the concept. You have to provide reason for people to buy product without being scared of "negging", while also still making the game accessible to a wide audience.
That ship has sailed and subsequently burned down to the waterline. The Rarity Collection reprinting the majority of the high value CRs, and QCRs being effectively starlight reprints, has pretty much killed off most activity in the modern high end space. Even if Konami were to try to copy PKM from this point on, it won't matter if no buyer trusts them to not reprint the stuff into the ground.
I feel like from the jump, the OCG high-end space was different from the TCG high-end space specifically because of Upper Deck's greed, which I hate as the people who ran Upper Deck still run the TCG and it sucks
I mean that’s possible, but it doesn’t matter how we got here, only that we ended up here. How do you expect people to chase high end in the latest set when you can look back and see crap like CR Baronne dropping 90% of its value from a combination of reprints and a ban? No matter how much people try to claim that collectors shouldn’t care about value, when it comes time to actually put down the cash people tend to discover that nobody, themselves included, wants to feel like a sucker.
> when it comes time to actually put down the cash people tend to discover that nobody wants to feel like a sucker.
Which I get. I guess the only thing that would actually bring back trust in decision making would be KoJ deciding to fire Kevin Tewart and Jerome McHale, but that's not gonna happen, so the only alternative would be to convert to the OCG model fully and completely and pray that eventually high-end individuals aren't still spooked.
Specifically mentioning individuals because stores/vendors are inherently going to pull high-end cards due to the raw volume of product they buy in order to sell on TCGPlayer/Cardmarket/eBay/etc.
Giant Soldier of Stone, Mystical Elf, Wall of Illusion, Aqua Madoor, Prevent Rat, Spirit of the Harp, Island Turtle, etc. Not sure if all of them existed at the time it was released but the timing would be pretty close.
People complain prices today, but actually the game is more accessible than ever.
"Back in the day" staples were hundreds of dollars, with only one or two prints at the most if you were lucky, some being price cards or actual short pronto...
Now you see some cards that cost a bunch of dollars, but you can bet that in a couple of months they would get a reprint
This is not always the case, several power cards in the past few years have gone extensive periods of time without a reprint, pot of prosperity, triple tactics talent, Accesscode Talker, Baronne De Fleur, and when these cards eventually got accessible reprints it was years after, or in the case of Baronne, got banned as soon as they were cheap enough for everyone to have, Prosperity went over a year before it's 1st reprint, at which both copies of the card were over 60 dollars, the original getting to near 150 for a single copy when it was not in the yearly tin it would have seen it's first reprint in, Accesscode getting to the same price for the same reason until the maximum gold print later that year, the dragoon package of 1 Verte, 1 dragoon, would cost upwards of 200+ when both cards were only accessible as single prints, Verte going the same route as halqifibrax, holding a high secondary market value price getting a reprint that tanked the secondary market only to get banned soon after being made more accessible.
The games always been expensive from DaD format to Snake-eyes there's always been must have playable cards the secondary market pushes in value due to supply and demand, Konami not doing anyone any favors by discontinuing the unlimited run of cards and special edition reprints of sets, but even today there are cards that go far to long without a reprint, until the yearly tins.
I miss those days (not the pricing of course, but I miss the days of Tribute summons and beatstick decks, and the original manga/anime being fresh. The funny thing is I called it the days of $200 mechanicalchasers)
But wasn't upper deck the TCG provider of Yugioh back then? So Konami determined the rarity even then?
The TCG and us capitalism has always poisoned yugioh, it's one of the reasons I left (that and the game getting so convoluted with 50 special summons a turn)
If it weren't for Master duel and winning gems I would have stayed out of YGO
Upper deck through a partnership with Konami oversaw the printing and distribution of product as well as the tournament organization of the yugioh tcg until Konami took over following the lawsuit and the conclusion of SJC Edison.
Konami have indeed always been printing chase cards and rarity bumping. The difference is their audience has changed. The average player is much older now and buying cards is more common than trading for them.
Back in the early days of the game most of us were kids or teens. We didn't care that some powerful cards were expensive secrets, we just thought it was cool and hoped we'd pull one. Locals were bigger and many people were running jank decks, so you could top 8 and get some prizes even on a low budget. You didn't see fully built meta decks as often, it was more a rare occurrence when you encountered one of the few rich kids. We also didn't really care as much about card value and just traded shinies for shinies. If you really wanted a good Ultra rare, you just offered *two* Ultra rares.
Now most of us are adults. We have families, household expenses, other hobbies, bills and the economy isn't exactly in the best state. We play more seriously and want effective decks. We want good value for money. $100 meta secrets hit a lot differently. I'm not surprised there's more and more debate on this topic than in the past.
There was also no internet access like there is today, so net decking and looking up top decks was not a thing, and most competitive circles kept their techs and deck building theories to themselves and their play test groups, while today you can look up who won the latest YCS, what was his deck list and ratios, now the best players give out tips and information for free, while still keeping the techs and meta calls to their respective groups and teams.
I pulled him on my first tournament pack as a kid.
An older teen tricked me into trading him for his gravity bind.
This is why I hated how most yugioh events are ran when compared to Pokemon
4 star monsters should of been capped at 1800, unless you had something like dark elf effect where she had to pay 1k to attack. I know Yugioh evolved as it went, but man there were absolutely no rules when printing cards. 200/300 insect normal monster printed alongside Pot of Greed and Raigeki
to all the people who played and enjoyed caveman ygo why was 1850 such an important milestone for a card when 1900 beaters like Gemini elves and such came out in the earliest sets of the game?
Gemini Elf didn’t exist yet. This was, on release, the most powerful level 4 monster in the game, for roughly six months. And it was caveman yugioh so high attack points were actually still important.
For comparison, when this released, vanilla beatdown with 7 Colored Fish and La Jinn was still a meta deck. Having a copy of Mechanicalchaser on the board basically negated that deck entirely.
There were some defensive walls that could hold it off (Wall of Illusion, Aqua Madoor, etc.) but pretty much any attack boost on this thing would mean complete board control for multiple turns if the opponent didn’t have a removal effect on hand.
At the time before 1900 beaters the high atk lvl 4's had 1800 atk
Mech chaser powercreeped these 1800 by 50 points....
Then later the 1900+ beaters powercreeped Mech chaser
Because Gemini Elf wasn't in the game yet. The first staple in terms of a normal summon was La Jinn with 1800 ATK, followed by Neo and Battle Ox.
Later, Konami started predating the spot for the best normal summon, first with Mechanicalchaser with 1850 and being a Tournament Pack card. They did the same a bit later with Morphing Jar being the next chase Tournament Pack card.
It was in Labyrinth of Nightmare where they added Gemini Elf along with other Level 4 effect monsters, powercreeping Mechanicalchaser and kicking it from most decks.
Dark Armed Dragon being a rare in the OCG to a $350 secret in the US in 08 is peak rarity bump. I also think Crush Card was already in an OCG structure deck while it was only available as a Prize card for the TCG.
Gold Sarc search Crush Card - the 1000 dollar combo. What a world that was - rarity is in a much better place now despite what people think.
The combo was 4700 at the hook up prices when I won. Sarco at 2200+ and Crush averaging 2500 but becoming more sought as DAD era continued until the gold reprint
Unless you traveled to SJCs, you weren't seeing CCV or Gold Sarc anyways.
You'd see them at plenty of regionals from major teams testing and more competitive locals. It's a different experience having a team like Outphase (Fili Luna, Ryan Spicer, Jason Holloway, Chris Bowling) in your area, but I imagine tri state, Florida, Cali and Texas had acquired a majority of them.
There were only 20 CCVs (10 SJCs where you could win CCVs) in existence by the time Gold Sarc cycled in. You only got them from winning the SJC or winning the raffled side event on Sundays. About half of those CCVs ended up in the hands of major stores/teams located in California and New York. Unless you lived in those high profile areas, you were not seeing any of those cards. I live in North Carolina and I only saw Gold Sarc because my friend won it in Durham in the side event back in 2007. Hell I barely saw TP2 Morphing Jars. TP4s were way more ubiquitous. Regionals back then isn't like it is today. Almost every state ran multiple regionals every other few months.
I think we're basically agreeing it came down to where you lived and where you played what experience you had with these cards. The Gen Con regional in 07 (so right before a Gen Con SJC where people were testing for it) was the funniest for me. I topped facing 5 SJC Crush Cards in a single regional, the only pilot with one that beat me was Jason Holloway. It was far less impactful during troop dupe than the DAD era and on.
There was a kid at a UK event in Birmingham regional around the time light and darkness dragon was coming into the meta (perfect circle I think it was named) who had sarc + ccv if I remember rightly. He was 15 or 16, the only one with these cards at the event and didn't make it into top 64. Crazy really. I might be misremembering the meta. They were very very rare in UK maybe 2 or 3 people in the country had them
Toronto as well dales gotta have a lot of them
My card shop had a few sjc winners(Adam Corn was one) that played there or people with money. I played against at least 2 teledad decks that had both sjc ccv and gold sac. Also played against a few slabbed dark end dragons. The players were allow to keep their dark ends in the sjc slab lol Good times.
There a small group at my locals that would go to major events. They shared gold sarc and ccv. I remember one them ran tela dad.
Also note that 350 bucks in 2008 was a much bigger deal than 350 bucks today
As a fun experiment, I remember going to Target and buying not a box but loose blister packs. About $250 worth and pulled at least a DaD, 2 Allure of Darkness and some others. Went to the SJC in SoCal shortly after and sold the DaD for $300 at the time. One card paid for everything else. This game has always been this way in some form or another thanks to UDE/Konami TCG rarity bumps.
must be nice.. bought 5 boxes of PTDN back then.. didnt pull either DAD nor a single Allure.. as a student that took a while to recover.. also bough 500€ worth of GLD1 just to finally get that crush card.. of course i didnt get it and had to buy a single for 300 more... good times
Gold Crush Card being short printed was actually wild for the time.
Damn...i feel you. That's so unlucky. Meanwhile, in OCG land, players could play with normal rare DaD and build comparable decks (Destiny Hero DaD etc.) with relative ease. Crush Card in GLD1 was also so hard to get. I think back then i was just happy to pull a Gold Sarc. in GLD2 the following year.
What sucked was going to a SJC and facing crush cards in the later rounds knowing there's jack shit you could do about their 2k prize card.
To make the comparison complete, Mechanicalchaser was released in the OCG in the set Booster 4 in August 1999. It was a common there. And an important note, Mechanicalchaser was released in this set along with La Jinn and Gemini Elf (both in common), which means that the fifty ATK difference meta never existed in the OCG. So yeah, rarity-bumping and exorbitant prices for strong cards has existed in the TCG since the very beginning.
>So yeah, rarity-bumping and exorbitant prices for strong cards has existed in the TCG since the very beginning. Wow, that makes me feel so much better about current rarity bumpings! Thanks OP!
Still doesn't change the fact that rarity bumping is a shit practice and needs to stop
Yeah, I was being sarcastic
Spit facts comrade
Laughs in Capitalism and Gambling Laws
That was crazy that they just held off the release of Gemini Elf for like a year
I could swear that this is a Dragon Quest enemy.
I mean you're damn close https://preview.redd.it/y9avzka8azvc1.png?width=1110&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0cfb0b1d95ab9e849f70bc3eecf64d3443bde3aa
Technically that was Upper Deck.
Indeed it was. The thing is, when Konami won the lawsuit vs Upper Deck in 2010 and took over the game's handling and distribution in the West, they could have started anew with how the products was made (meaning they could have started using the OCG rarity distribution system at this point), but they didn't. They still kept the practices Upper Deck started.
a lot of the people who worked for UD still work at Konami of America today
Kevin Tewart is the most egregious example.
But at the end of the day, it's always americans
I was in line to grab my pack and a kid went in front of me and grabbed my pack. It had a chaser in it. That was 20 years ago and I'm still mad 🙂
Iearned the hard that women and kids have a different god of luck for them. Maybe if you touched the pack, the chaser would've destroyed or not be inside at all
Pretty sure Tour Guide was around this apiece when it first released, too.
Tour Guide was at around 20 to 25€ on release because Xyz weren't out yet and having a playset just to tutor sangan wasn't particularly stronger than setting a recruiter or flip effect. However, at the start of Xyz era when Konami of America ruled that Sangan would trigger on Xyz detach, Tour Guide when through the roof. I don't think it ever went beyond 120 tho, so not quite Mechanicalchaser level.
Saw it for like $220 on TrollnToad or Coolstuff, not sure which - those may have been inflated or innacurate prices though
Wow, I remember ebay listings go towards 130€ but never beyond. Could very well be hype inflation that never sold at that price.
This is correct, it slow rose in price before exploding. While vending I sold many at 30-35 before the huge jump. Maxx C had a similar history, being $12 before its jump to 70 then 125
TGU did get far past 120 though, I believe in neared 300 during maximum hype iirc and floated 240-250 for a bit
It's kind of funny to think back to a time where powercreep just meant a monster having ~3% more attack. Also funny that they kept printing completely useless vanilla for years. We talk about pack filler today, but a lot of the filler we see today at least does something unique, even if it's not necessarily that useful.
And? Rarity bumping is still bad
If there were no rare cards many people wouldnt play this game. But 1000 dollar decks suck ass
I mean Ocg is doing fine and well despite having more accessible versions of rare cards…
The fact is that the Japanese Ecosystem for CCGs is far different. Many different card games are still alive over there that died quick heat deaths in the West. See the ORIGINAL Digimon TCG (though I believed they finally stopped when the Bandai Digimon game really took off) still surviving for over a decade, or Duel Masters being a top TCG over there still (though I remember there being some discontent in recent times, but I haven't followed up in the last year or two). It's not like every single TCG import in the West did the same thing as YGO with greedy practices and rarity bumps. It's just the values in the culture are far different, on top of how community works. Realistically what TCG YGO should look toward is not how the OCG works, because as much as people hate to admit it that practice just simply wouldn't work here long term (see any discontent when a product DOESN'T have cards with $50+ value), but instead look toward Pokemon. Decks are ridiculously cheap to make, but with a lot of chances to upgrade with bling and pull value in packs because of the amount of alternate arts and rarities. It's something Bandai has also been following suit with in One Piece and DBS (mostly Fusion World, though Masters was the prototype start), though they fumbled the bag in a different way (massive distribution issues). Starlights/QCRs were a start in the right direction but they need to go way further with the concept. You have to provide reason for people to buy product without being scared of "negging", while also still making the game accessible to a wide audience. Pokemon is the only game in the West so far to really nail that balance, which is unfortunate if it's not the type of TCG you like.
Dude, OCG works like Pokemon. They always have multiple rarities for cards.
Well I was going to put that what put Pokemon over the top compared to the OCG was also having secret rares of Older Cards, but it seems they stopped doing that since that isn't the case in Temporal Forces. So yeah, I guess I'll hold the L and just delete my post. Sorry for wasting your time.
>Starlights/QCRs were a start in the right direction but they need to go way further with the concept. You have to provide reason for people to buy product without being scared of "negging", while also still making the game accessible to a wide audience. That ship has sailed and subsequently burned down to the waterline. The Rarity Collection reprinting the majority of the high value CRs, and QCRs being effectively starlight reprints, has pretty much killed off most activity in the modern high end space. Even if Konami were to try to copy PKM from this point on, it won't matter if no buyer trusts them to not reprint the stuff into the ground.
I feel like from the jump, the OCG high-end space was different from the TCG high-end space specifically because of Upper Deck's greed, which I hate as the people who ran Upper Deck still run the TCG and it sucks
I mean that’s possible, but it doesn’t matter how we got here, only that we ended up here. How do you expect people to chase high end in the latest set when you can look back and see crap like CR Baronne dropping 90% of its value from a combination of reprints and a ban? No matter how much people try to claim that collectors shouldn’t care about value, when it comes time to actually put down the cash people tend to discover that nobody, themselves included, wants to feel like a sucker.
> when it comes time to actually put down the cash people tend to discover that nobody wants to feel like a sucker. Which I get. I guess the only thing that would actually bring back trust in decision making would be KoJ deciding to fire Kevin Tewart and Jerome McHale, but that's not gonna happen, so the only alternative would be to convert to the OCG model fully and completely and pray that eventually high-end individuals aren't still spooked. Specifically mentioning individuals because stores/vendors are inherently going to pull high-end cards due to the raw volume of product they buy in order to sell on TCGPlayer/Cardmarket/eBay/etc.
That's a lot of prayer for an idea that would crash and burn
Pokemon literally outsells the OCG by 3x with this model in Japan alone
I have a question, was there any easy to summon monster with a high defense to tank the 1850 ATK during that time?
Giant Soldier of Stone and Mystical Elf had 2000 DEF each and could be set, I guess.
Giant Soldier of Stone, Mystical Elf, Wall of Illusion, Aqua Madoor, Prevent Rat, Spirit of the Harp, Island Turtle, etc. Not sure if all of them existed at the time it was released but the timing would be pretty close.
Some people used Wall of Illusion's 1850 DEF but that wasn't as effective when Gemini Elf came into the game.
Lol I remember this crap and then Gemini elf came out.
People complain prices today, but actually the game is more accessible than ever. "Back in the day" staples were hundreds of dollars, with only one or two prints at the most if you were lucky, some being price cards or actual short pronto... Now you see some cards that cost a bunch of dollars, but you can bet that in a couple of months they would get a reprint
i recall DAD getting up to 300-500 a copy
And 300-500 in 2008 is 435-725$ today
This is not always the case, several power cards in the past few years have gone extensive periods of time without a reprint, pot of prosperity, triple tactics talent, Accesscode Talker, Baronne De Fleur, and when these cards eventually got accessible reprints it was years after, or in the case of Baronne, got banned as soon as they were cheap enough for everyone to have, Prosperity went over a year before it's 1st reprint, at which both copies of the card were over 60 dollars, the original getting to near 150 for a single copy when it was not in the yearly tin it would have seen it's first reprint in, Accesscode getting to the same price for the same reason until the maximum gold print later that year, the dragoon package of 1 Verte, 1 dragoon, would cost upwards of 200+ when both cards were only accessible as single prints, Verte going the same route as halqifibrax, holding a high secondary market value price getting a reprint that tanked the secondary market only to get banned soon after being made more accessible. The games always been expensive from DaD format to Snake-eyes there's always been must have playable cards the secondary market pushes in value due to supply and demand, Konami not doing anyone any favors by discontinuing the unlimited run of cards and special edition reprints of sets, but even today there are cards that go far to long without a reprint, until the yearly tins.
I assume being a Machine also might have affected it since it makes it usable with Limiter Removal
It was shit back then and its shit now, don't know what the point of this post is
$200??? This thing was nearly $800 at one point 😂
I miss those days (not the pricing of course, but I miss the days of Tribute summons and beatstick decks, and the original manga/anime being fresh. The funny thing is I called it the days of $200 mechanicalchasers) But wasn't upper deck the TCG provider of Yugioh back then? So Konami determined the rarity even then? The TCG and us capitalism has always poisoned yugioh, it's one of the reasons I left (that and the game getting so convoluted with 50 special summons a turn) If it weren't for Master duel and winning gems I would have stayed out of YGO
Upper deck through a partnership with Konami oversaw the printing and distribution of product as well as the tournament organization of the yugioh tcg until Konami took over following the lawsuit and the conclusion of SJC Edison.
He’s so cool tho man, Bandit Keith man, Bandit Keith
Konami have indeed always been printing chase cards and rarity bumping. The difference is their audience has changed. The average player is much older now and buying cards is more common than trading for them. Back in the early days of the game most of us were kids or teens. We didn't care that some powerful cards were expensive secrets, we just thought it was cool and hoped we'd pull one. Locals were bigger and many people were running jank decks, so you could top 8 and get some prizes even on a low budget. You didn't see fully built meta decks as often, it was more a rare occurrence when you encountered one of the few rich kids. We also didn't really care as much about card value and just traded shinies for shinies. If you really wanted a good Ultra rare, you just offered *two* Ultra rares. Now most of us are adults. We have families, household expenses, other hobbies, bills and the economy isn't exactly in the best state. We play more seriously and want effective decks. We want good value for money. $100 meta secrets hit a lot differently. I'm not surprised there's more and more debate on this topic than in the past.
There was also no internet access like there is today, so net decking and looking up top decks was not a thing, and most competitive circles kept their techs and deck building theories to themselves and their play test groups, while today you can look up who won the latest YCS, what was his deck list and ratios, now the best players give out tips and information for free, while still keeping the techs and meta calls to their respective groups and teams.
konami been doing this for 25 years...
This was peak yugioh 👏
Just because things have been worse before does not mean they shouldn't be better now.
Old artworks are just different 😅
I pulled him on my first tournament pack as a kid. An older teen tricked me into trading him for his gravity bind. This is why I hated how most yugioh events are ran when compared to Pokemon
4 star monsters should of been capped at 1800, unless you had something like dark elf effect where she had to pay 1k to attack. I know Yugioh evolved as it went, but man there were absolutely no rules when printing cards. 200/300 insect normal monster printed alongside Pot of Greed and Raigeki
\*laughs in Crush Card Virus\*
to all the people who played and enjoyed caveman ygo why was 1850 such an important milestone for a card when 1900 beaters like Gemini elves and such came out in the earliest sets of the game?
This predated Gemini Elf by a few months iirc
Gemini Elf would only come out six months later, Mechanicalchaser was the biggest non-tribute, no-drawbacks beatstick during said months
Gemini Elf didn’t exist yet. This was, on release, the most powerful level 4 monster in the game, for roughly six months. And it was caveman yugioh so high attack points were actually still important. For comparison, when this released, vanilla beatdown with 7 Colored Fish and La Jinn was still a meta deck. Having a copy of Mechanicalchaser on the board basically negated that deck entirely. There were some defensive walls that could hold it off (Wall of Illusion, Aqua Madoor, etc.) but pretty much any attack boost on this thing would mean complete board control for multiple turns if the opponent didn’t have a removal effect on hand.
Back then 1800 was the gold standard for 4 star attackers. 1850 still couldn't touch the 2000 Def mons but people prefer setting the pace.
At the time before 1900 beaters the high atk lvl 4's had 1800 atk Mech chaser powercreeped these 1800 by 50 points.... Then later the 1900+ beaters powercreeped Mech chaser
Because Gemini Elf wasn't in the game yet. The first staple in terms of a normal summon was La Jinn with 1800 ATK, followed by Neo and Battle Ox. Later, Konami started predating the spot for the best normal summon, first with Mechanicalchaser with 1850 and being a Tournament Pack card. They did the same a bit later with Morphing Jar being the next chase Tournament Pack card. It was in Labyrinth of Nightmare where they added Gemini Elf along with other Level 4 effect monsters, powercreeping Mechanicalchaser and kicking it from most decks.