Man claims prized Yu-Gi-Oh cards found in the trash have made him "over $60,000" already, with an expert valuing the total haul near $1 million

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It's not every day that you find hyper-rare Yu-Gi-Oh cards in a dumpster, but one man claims to have done just that… and then sold them for a mess of cash.

I've spent a long time reporting on the best card games, but I'll be honest: I've never heard anything quite like what fans are calling the Yu-Gi-Oh Dumpster Drama. In an interview with 404 Media, the man (who preferred to go unnamed when speaking to the site while seeking legal counsel) claims that he found thousands of bulk cards and uncut sheets "in a dumpster as part of a security breach involving a contractor." He then began selling these bit by bit on sites like eBay and Facebook for hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

Because the sale of uncut sheets (e.g. sheets that haven't been cut into individual cards, potentially due to a mistake or misalignment) is stringently policed by Yu-Gi-Oh publisher Konami, eyebrows were raised in the community. These are supposed to be destroyed by the manufacturer, so fans began to question how they'd been acquired.

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The man selling them insisted that they were indeed found in a dumpster ("I've made over $60,000 off these f****** Yu-Gi-Oh cards out of the trash," he claimed on a public Facebook post that can still be found), and began firing off rather… uncourteous replies to those who questioned him in the comments. And then things got wilder, because his mom waded in.

[Yu-Gi-Oh!] The $500k Dallas Dumpster Fire: Pulling rare cards from the trash, selling grails for pennies, faking insane stories, and a mother-son meltdown. from r/HobbyDrama

A woman claiming to be his mother soon put in a request for the Uncut Sheets Collectors Facebook group to take down a video about the whole affair because it featured his personal information. Although this understandably caused a stir, she at least seemed to verify the story by saying she owns a "small metal recycling company" and that the man "was in a dumpster looking for metal and came across these cards plain and simple." She then asked the group what they would do if they found a similar haul in the trash.

This was followed by the man claiming the police had turned up at his motel, which he then said was an April Fool's joke, and now I don't know what to believe and have a headache.

You can find a full timeline of the affair via Reddit.

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No matter what, the irony of all this is that the man could have earned so much more from his treasure trove of cards. A moderator for the Uncut Sheets Collectors group, Nick, told 404 Media that "I could have probably sold that stuff over the course of a decade for, probably, a million dollars [...] some of the miscut starlight or Quarter Century Rare sheets were probably worth $5,000. Some of the damaged non-foil sheets are probably worth $800. So if you have 400 sheets averaging $2,000 each, that’s at least $800,000 in revenue, not including other stuff he had."

Oof. Honestly, that's enough internet drama for one day.

For slightly more chilled out tabletop shenanigans, don't miss the best board games or the best tabletop RPGs.

Benjamin AbbottTabletop & Merch Editor

I've been writing about games in one form or another since 2012, but these days you'll find me managing GamesRadar+'s tabletop gaming and toy coverage (I spend my time here handling everything from board game reviews to the latest Lego news). I've also been obsessed with Warhammer since the 1990s, and love nothing more than running tabletop RPGs like D&D as a Dungeon Master.

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