Just 10 days after the card was put up for auction, Tyler The Great Warrior has broken several records and has become just the second Yu-Gi-Oh! card to ever fetch a price over $300,000 USD.
This sale was unique for several reasons, one being the auctioned card is a one-of-a-kind product produced through a partnership between the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Konami, and 4Kids Entertainment in 2002 after artist Tyler Gressle went through serious treatment to combat a rare form of liver cancer.
Gressle designed Tyler The Great Warrior’s art himself before it was brought to life by Yu-Gi-Oh! Creator Kazuki Takahashi. Since then, it has been viewed by the Yu-Gi-Oh! community as a priceless card that many thought would never hit the market.
However, after more than 20 years of owning the card, Gressle decided it was time to part with his prized possession to fund future plans in his life by giving it a home where someone else can “truly value that card and the history and everything that kind of came to create it.”
Tyler The Great Warrior went up for auction on April 19 with a starting price of $0.99 and quickly rocketed to over $100,000 within the first hour. From there bidding slowed to a crawl as a select few users placed smaller amounts down throughout the week.
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From April 20 to 28, the card capped out at $165,000 before a landslide of offers hit in the closing hours. In the span of roughly 10 hours, the price broke $200,000 as two recurring bidders fought for the prize card—with the final price eventually settling at $311,211 as the auction officially closed.
While this isn’t exactly record-setting for card games as a whole, Tyler The Great Warrior is the first western sale of a Yu-Gi-Oh! card to reach those figures.
The only other Yu-Gi-Oh! card that may have been sold for over $300,000 is the coveted Asia Championship 2001 Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon prize card. A few mixed reports of this special card that was given out to the event’s winner say it has been sold for its listed price of 45 million yen— roughly $330,166 depending on when the deal was finalized.
This also ignores the legendary stainless steel Black Luster Soldier that was handed out as a prize at the very first Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship event in 1999, which has reportedly been sold for $2 million in the past—though no source has been found for that rumor.
Regardless of those two outliers, Tyler The Great Warrior is now the most a Yu-Gi-Oh! card has gone for in a public auction.
