How to tell if your Yugioh Cards are real or fake
by Ask a Healer
Yep, Ask a Healer is a wellness library. So what's an article on Yu-gi-oh cards doing on here? Well, I love collectibles. And I just have to share about them somewhere! I don't often buy collectible trading cards as my interests are more in books and other collectibles but I purchased what I thought were Yu-Gi-Oh Card packs at a store that was going out of business. They were 70 percent off so I purchased about 15 packs. When I got home and started researching them online, I wasn't finding the names of the packs I had purchased anywhere and began to see websites in my search that talked about fake Yu-Gi-Oh cards. I started researching to find out how to know if a Yugioh card was fake or genuine and that was a challenge!
I had so many questions and was getting conflicting answers. I finally wrote to two different people at Upper Deck and asked a lot of questions. Below is what I have learned so far about what makes a Yugioh card genuine. The first question I had was about the packs I had purchased and they held a big clue to spotting fakes, especially if buying new in the pack.
If you can't find the exact name on the front of your card pack, listed on a reputable reseller site, then you should suspect fakery. None of my four different kinds of card packs were listed. When I wrote Upper Deck, I got back the sad news. All four of the types I had purchased were fake. The card decks that I purchased, which I've been told are all fake, have the following names:
Imperial Dragon in the Hell - Yu-Gi-Oh! GX 2
Swordfight Beast Fish Dipper Yu-Gi-Oh! GX 4
Evil Hero Fierce Blade Monster Yu-Gi-Oh! GX 4
Evil Hero Dapk Gaia Yu-Gi-Oh! GX 4
Additional Indicators of Fake Yu-Gi-Oh! Cards:
Genuine Yu-gi-oh cards will have corners that are very slightly rounded. Fakes will often have sharp corners. Genuine cards do not allow light to pass through if help up to a light"..I'm not sure if absolutely no light passes through or just not noticable light but if you hold it up and you can clearly see the swirl design on the back, it is probably a fake. Language is an indicator of a fake Yugioh card too. If the language is odd, not well-written in good english, suspect a fake. A thick, shiny coating that makes the card a little thicker than a playing card, or thicker than your other genuine Yugioh cards. A foil square in the lower right corner that does not contain the eye of Anubis when you shift it, or that is easy to scrape off with your fingernail. Also, the absense of either a gold or silver foil square with eye of Anubis.
More indicators of a fake card:
~ Mispellings of Konami on the back or the name of Kazuki Takahashi.
~ Missing info on back of card, either Konami at the top left corner or the logo at the bottom right corner, which reads Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game.
~ Blurred, different or differently colored symbols right of the card title.
~ Missing stars under title, wrong number of stars, odd-looking stars, blurred or unclear print on stars.
~ Card names that are "almost" right but not.
~ Font type that looks different than card you know to be genuine.
~ Blurred or inferior printing. Compare to genuine cards in your possession.
~ Improper placement of any of the writing.
~ Missing numbers at bottom left or bottom right of cards.
Other indicators of fake Yu-gi-oh cards include:
The seal on the back of the card packages should be irregular looking. If it has a smooth seal at the back where the packs are sealed, that's an indicator that they could be fake. Also, if any of the writing on the back looks unclear or poor quality, that's a warning as well. The packs I bought had perfectly clear printing but a smooth close, instead of the irregular looking seal. However, when I bought them, I didn't know to look for either sign of fakery.
The format for the numbers that appear below the card image and description, to the right, usually have a format of several letters followed by numbers or EN and numbers. For example".the spell card "Black Luster Ritual" lst Edition, reads SYE-025. The first edition "Sand Moth" reads SD7-EN015. The EN stands for English. I had some cards that were correct in every other aspect but which had the letter "A" in front of the numbers. For example, instead of SDK-014, the card had SDK-A014.
I was told that cards with the letter "A" before the number indicates an Australian Yu-Gi-Oh card.. The "SDK" stands for Starter Deck Kaiba" .and is on older cards. All the newer cards have EN before the numbers of english cards but some of the older ones did not, from what I can gather from Upper Deck reps.
The color of the little square foil holograms matters too and getting an answer is confusing. The first person I asked said all the foil squares should be gold. However, after seeing so very many that were silver, I wrote again, asking the same question to a different email address on the website. Someone from the fraud department at Upper Deck wrote back to say that it is the first edition cards that should have gold foil while the Unlimited Cards have silver-colored foil squares. Yet another source I found said that there were some of these collectible trading cards that were genuine first edition but still had silver foil squares instead of gold. I don't know how you tell if a lst edition with a silver square is genuine or not. Most 1st editions should have gold-colored hologram square.
You should be able to see the Eye of Anubis by moving the card a certain way in the light, within the gold or silver foil. Moving it another way, you should see Yu-Gi-Oh printed in the same little square of silver or gold. If it's just a solid blotch of gold or silver, with no holographic images within it, it's a fake.
If you are buying a 1st Edition, hold it next to an Unlimited Card to be sure it is gold instead of silver, because it can be hard to tell in certain light. If buying online, ask the buyer if the foil is gold or silver, if concerned that you might be getting a fake. The best way to avoid getting ripped off when shopping in person, in a trading card store or yard sale, is to have a couple of genuine cards with you for comparison. The other best way is to buy from someone who is aware of these issues and who takes steps to insure that their cards are genuine and not fake Yugioh cards.
Disclaimer: The info on spotting a fake yugioh card on this page is not presented as professional advice. If you are considering purchase of one of the more valuable of these collectible trading cards, always take it to a card expert for verification or request verification documentation.
