As documented on this blog, I didn't grow up collecting sports cards. I had some here and there but it wasn't an active hobby until much later on in my teens.
Today I just wanted to share the actual cards I've had since childhood that slowly (very slowly) have been built upon over the years.
Yup, Yu-Gi-Oh! cards.
These can be organized into about four different time periods of my life where I've been on and off of it.
1. 2002-2004
While I was clearing stuff out from my childhood home a few years ago I came across a plastic bag and inside were a select few cards I owned from the days when I was still in elementary school.
Chief among them was this Dark Magician. Originally it came in a starter deck from when Yu-Gi-Oh! first came to North America. But as a kid I thought the original card art for DM sucked so I put a sticker of DM from the anime over it. This is easily the most "well loved" card in my possession. The cut corners, the piece of tape I put on it, it's all there baby.
I had a handful of Japanese cards too. The more scuffed the card is, the more I must've liked it. After all, Magical Cylinders played a big role in the anime and this card is shiny! Or was.
At the time Yu-Gi-Oh! was becoming a phenomenon that was being played at playgrounds across the US and classrooms all across Japan. Despite that, the number of friends I had who actually played the game was basically zero.
We all had the cards and watched the Duel Monsters anime, but what we didn't have was reading comprehension. The way the cards work can be very confusing and the fact that real rules for the game are nothing like how it was played in the anime didn't help. It ultimately it came down to who could shout the loudest before the closest parent or teacher in our vicinity stepped in to tell us to stop playing this game and do something else.
Just like that though, I did stop. After the Battle City arc in the anime, I lost interest in the franchise and tuned out for a while.
2. 2006
This wasn't really a revival but I did happen to catch the second anime series Yu-Gi-Oh! GX on Cartoon Network a few times and thought it was pretty neat to watch.
I didn't pick up any cards around this time period because by then all of my friends had moved on from the franchise. But in the years since I did pick up a few cards I liked from the show. Learning that the best HERO strategy is to use absolutely none of the monsters shown in the show was a heartbreaker though.
3. 2008-2009
By 2008 I had moved to Japan and over there Yu-Gi-Oh! was hot in the streets. Around this time we were in the 3rd anime series Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's and more importantly during the midst of when the game transformed overnight.
It was thanks to the introduction of synchro summoning that the game had a new mechanic which fleshed it out even further. This is where in-game strategies shifted in a huge way and started to turn into the combo fest it's since become.
During that wave I pulled two "relief" parallels, which is usually one of the more sought after parallels given to the rarer cards in the Japanese sets. These two weren't worth anything then and they're worth even less now but it sure did feel cool to say I was able to pull them out of random packs I bought on a whim at 7-Eleven.
But despite that, I just still couldn't get into the card game because it still required me to read and interpret how cards worked. By 2010 my interests shifted to LEGO and then to baseball cards.
4. 2017-2019
Alright, third time's the charm right? This is when I'll finally learn how to play the game right?
Well kinda. Around 2016 is when the app Duel Links launched, and in its early infancy it was a nice way to get re-introduced to a sort've abbreviated version of Yu-Gi-Oh! It helped ease me through the core gameplay and more importantly didn't require me to memorize every effect in play since the game did it automatically.
My first blogposts about Yu-Gi-Oh! were from around that time period too.
But the game Duel Links started getting complicated and my friends who also played the game started leaving (the game being a gacha/grindfest doesn't help). I also deleted it when my phone just needed the space for other things.
But hey, at least I'd been able to obtain some level of understanding for how the game works.
5. 2022-today
In late 2022 I got a new phone, and more memory space. With that I downloaded Duel Links again and as somewhat expected the game evolved because it had introduced the new mechanics the actual card game had been implementing since I stopped paying attention in 2009.
XYZ Summoning, Pendulum Summoning, Link Summoning, Rush Duels, welcome to Master Rule Five!
The XYZ and Pendulum eras of the franchise were ultimately what I feel I truly missed but at the same time it didn't appear like I missed out on much.
Now I've got a firmer grasp on the game, how to play it, and most important of all what I want to play. Turns out the best way to get better at playing a children's card game is to not be a child.
After all this time I've finally assembled an actual deck proper that isn't just a pile of random stuff combined from booster packs and starter decks. It's not the best, nor is it competitive, but I like it.
I'm not sure if I can describe it as "fun" because Yu-Gi-Oh! is not supposed to be fun, it's supposed to be a cruel ritual by which the vengeful undead spirit of a pharaoh judges whether you deserve to just die, or die and then have your soul banished to hell. But at least I know what it can do.
Anyway as I was sorting, sleeving and paging these cards together, it just struck me that this is the rare franchise/collectible where I'd picked it up and then put it back down more than any other hobby. Every time my appreciation for it grew just a little bit. Will I eventually get bored again and then move on? Probably. But if my life to now has shown me anything, it's that I'll find my way back to it again eventually.
The heart of the cards compels me I guess.
As always thanks for stopping by and take care.