There are rare baseball cards and comic that have sold for well over $1 million. Certain cards from Magic: The Gathering and Pokemon have also sold in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. This is because collectibles have undeniably turned into an alternative asset class where collectors are competing with investors to own the same exact asset.

What collectors and investors need to understand is that there are no assurances that a collectible bought today will be worth more tomorrow, next year or in a decade. Asset prices rise and fall, and there are no guaranteed profits in stocks, bonds and real estate investments either.

So how would it sound to hear that a Yu-Gi-Oh card of the Blue-Eyes White Dragon reached $13.4 million in an auction? It sounds too good to be true. It may not even be real, and this does involve China.

Collectors Dashboard evaluates collectibles as an alternative asset class to determine whether certain collectibles should be owned solely for fun or whether they may be considered an investment. This particular Yu-Gi-Oh card is one which is going to have to sell itself rather than get any endorsement here, so far at least.

The South China Morning Post reported that a Blue-Eyes White Dragon from the special Yu-Gi-Oh Official Card Game 20th Anniversary edition, which is one of 500 limited edition cards released in 2019, may have been the reason a lot rose so rapidly. The auction was suspended as foul play is suspected in driving the price so high.

As to why the news seems too good to be true in the world of collectibles (and investment), the auction was to sell frozen assets of an embezzler held in jail and the value of the card is drastically lower.

Auction giant eBay currently has many pristine variations of multiple years Blue-Eyes White Dragon Yu-Gi-Oh cards for auction and held for sale in fixed prices. Some are well over $100,000 in “Buy It Now, or Best Offer” status but as you can see on the descending prices the prices fall rather quickly for other variations and other limited editions of the Blue-Eyes White Dragon cards.

Elsewhere, IGN noted that the bids are believed to be an attempt to win the rare Yu-Gi-Oh card among the other possessions in the auction.

Recent sales have been on eBay for variations of the Blue-Eyes White Dragon have been seen as high as $55,100.00 (May 27, 2021) for a perfect PSA 10 First Edition Blue-Eyes White Dragon from 2002, but that is not even the same card in question.

While not exactly the same card, the site HypeBeast.com reported that a Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG Masterpiece Series Blue-Eyes White Dragon launched in Europe and sold out in seconds for roughly $1,000 as a commemorative card of Seto Kaiba’s character. That set was said to be limited to 1,000 pieces and made from 99.9 percent pure silver which was then encased in a transparent acrylic glass holder. Those were then reported to be offered shortly after at large premiums on eBay as well.

The official Yu-Gi-Oh website also features limited edition offerings routinely, but you aren’t going to see $1 million sales there.