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Man finds $1M worth of Yu-Gi-Oh cards in a dumpster

175 points by danso

by 1-more

2 subcomments

> In 2023, Wizards—which publishes Magic: The Gathering—sent the Pinkerton detective agency to the home of a YouTuber who had acquired 22 boxes of cards
Born too late to get into a gun fight with striking steel workers on behalf of two guys who ended up building libraries, born just in time to chase down ill gotten Magic cards. Goodness.

by Aurornis

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> He referred to the cards as “thrown away” and said they were found in a dumpster as part of a security breach involving a contractor. He said it “involves 500,000 bulk cards (including high-value Caitlin Clark and [Quarter Century Rare] stock and 400+ factory uncut sheets.” The seller said that he’d “filed formal reports with Konami’s legal department regarding the contractor’s negligence.”He did not respond to follow-up questions.
Found in a dumpster in a shopping center that wasn't near the printing center, as part of a security breach involving a contractor, which the seller dutifully filed formal reports for?
And he found a second batch of these same sheets?
There are so many weird things going on in this story. Nobody has spoken up about them being counterfeit yet, other than the unclear warnings about them being in poor quality and refunding all of people's money when they complain.
Who knows, but counterfeit sheets being sold as new to collectors who want to believe they didn't just waste $1000 sounds like a real possibility.

by Animats

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Yu-Gi-Oh cards are still a thing? That dates from 30 years ago.
I just looked at Cabbage Patch dolls on eBay. The bottom has finally fallen out of that market. Used to see asking prices over $1000. Now they're all around $25.

by PunchyHamster

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> “The sale of uncut sheets is not allowed,” Konami, the company that owns Yu-Gi-Oh, told me in an email and did not respond to follow-up questions.
That doesn't seem like enforceable thing...

by kristianp

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This information may be relevant. It's in the article, but not expanded apon at all:
> Konami doesn’t have its own printers but instead contracts companies to print cards for it. One of those printers is Cartamundi, a Belgian company with a factory in Dallas. The seller’s mother’s scrapping business operates in a suburb of Dallas.

by quxbar

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About time somebody started flooding the millennial nostalgia collectibles market with fakes.

by alex1138

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That's the card graveyard. I play Pot of Greed. It allows me to draw two cards. I've drawn Monster Reborn. It allows me to claim the stash

by casey2

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Stolen or counterfeit. For people that don't know Yu-Gi-Oh $1M is a ludicrous number since Konami has and has had a very aggressive reprint policy. The value here entirely comes from the fact that it's an uncut sheet, I'd be surprised if anyone would pay that much for it.
On a side note in 2003 I opened a pack and one of the cards was just a piece of cardstock probably they just ran a few sheets through in off-impression mode and forgot about them

by hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

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>“F*** stupid f** I bet don't know you hoes getting none of this s**,” he said in another.
I trust this guy.

by traderj0e

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by cucumber3732842

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>Earlier in March, a brick and mortar store in Ohio called Table Top Gaming received a few hundred boxes of Yu-Gi-Oh cards from a distributor and found something strange inside. “The printing company packed the pallets with the test print sheets by mistake thinking they were just blank sheets. Pallets went to distro then me. I didn’t acquire them in any malicious way so I thought they were safe to sell, considered abandoned property because they were intended to be trashed,” Table Top Gaming owner Tyler Jedlicka told 404 Media.
>Jedlicka says he posted the test print sheets online and Konami contacted him. The company wanted the sheets back. Konami runs the official Yu-Gi-Oh tournaments and angering them could mean hurting a brick and mortar business, no matter how rare and expensive a test print might be. “Once we confirmed in writing with [Konami] the blame isn’t put on us and that our status as an official tournament store won’t be affected we agreed to return them all,” Jedlicka said, adding that the whole thing was resolved without a major issue.
Sounds like the mistake happened more than once but not everyone was dumb enough to sell them under their own name.

by hn773746483

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by rsoto2

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