Most Profitable Trading Cards

Similar to Hearts or Spades, trading cards have been around for years, people of all ages love collecting them to play or trade with friends. As a result, these cards are sold online on websites such as eBay, with rare cards having the potential to be sold for thousands. We analyzed cards from the top 5 collectable card games to find out which characters have the highest price tag.

We looked at character cards from the following games; Pokémon, Magic The Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Dragon Ball Z and Digimon. We separated the cards into the top cards overall, and the top character cards which made the most profit.

To view the full list, please view the interactive here.

The Most Profitable Game

Rather unsurprisingly Pokémon is the highest-grossing game, with a whopping $170.5 million made across all cards, selling at an average price of $38. Next is Magic the Gathering with a much smaller but still impressive $12 million, averaging at $21 per card. Yu-Gi-Oh! has $6 million, also averaging $21 a card. Dragon Ball Z is fourth with $3 million total and $19 a card, and Digimon comes in fifth with $800,000 total and $15 a card.

The Most Profitable Unique Card

Thirty-nine of the top fifty cards are from the Pokémon franchise, with the top card being a Pikachu first place trophy card from a Charizard tournament in 1998 that sold for $128,900. The remaining top 5 cards sold were a Slowpoke card for $99,000, a Blastoise for $95,00, Charizard for £75,000, and Umbreon for $70,000.

At number 10 is our first non-Pokémon card; The Dark Magicians from Yu-Gi-Oh! that sold for $31,725. The top Dragon Ball Z card is Broly which sold for $15,000 and placed 18 in our top 100. Beelzemon is the top Digimon card selling for $3,775 and placing 46. Finally, our top Magic the Gathering character card is Radiant which sold for $699.99 and placed 78.

The Most Profitable Characters

Despite Pokémon outperforming every other trading card game so far, the most profitable characters are a mix of all the games. The most profitable character is Ten Thousand Dragon from Yu-Gi-Oh! sold, on average, for $520 and grossing $202,125. The next most profitable card is Frieza from Dragon Ball Z, which sells for $136 on average and made a total profit of $2,726 across all sellers. Rounding off the top three is Lugia from Pokémon which averages a selling price of $131 and totaled $1,845,081.

The top Digimon card at 28 out of 100 is Lucemon which sells for an average price of $60 and made a profit of $38,132. The top Magic the Gathering card is The Ur-Dragon which sells for an average price of $31 and totaled $32,029.

Conclusion

Pokémon is our top trading card game, both from the total profit made and by having the highest percentage of high-value cards. However, don’t overlook trading card games like Magic the Gathering and Yu-gi-oh! in particular, the rarer cards in these games could earn you a fortune – and who knows, they could be sitting in your attic!