Category: Trading Cards

Supergirl Cards

August 17, 2026

Just a quick entry today, since I recently discovered these stashed away in a cupboard:

Four unopened ‘wax packs’ of Supergirl cards! These date to 1984, the year of the film. Forty-two years old and still sealed! Here’s what was inside one:

As you see rather than story synopsis on the backs of the cards Topps chose to tell the story in ‘Fotonovel’ style on the front. I applaud this decision, and feel it works so well I’m surprised Topps didn’t do it on any other film set.

What makes the cards truly unique are the backs:

Those are the six cards above flipped around, and every one of these is a sticker! Most of them are captioned with 1980s ‘comedy’ and they’ve aged into the sublime after so many years.

Many of them are die-cut as well, which makes them 100% better:

Do they still stick? Experience with other ancient stickers tells me probably not. Since in my four packs I got no doubles I’m not sure I even want to try peeling one off lest I ruin it!

But wouldn’t they look great on a postcard…?

This One’s For Adam (And Maybe Bernard)

July 12, 2026

We’re in NYC for two days, and I will blog about it in a day or two, but I had a fascinating experience today that I knew Adam would be interested in so this post is just about that.

There’s a store here called The Compleat Strategist that’s been selling RPG and board game products for many decades. I’ve shopped there many times over the two-plus decades I’ve been visiting the city but it was very obvious in recent years the store had seen better days.

So today when I walked in and found it revamped and rearranged and clean it was obvious a change had occurred.

The first thing I noticed was a big glass case containing lots of vintage Games Worshop Warhammer items. Books, games, models: all mint condition and most still shrink wrapped.

I don’t know much about this stuff but I do know how unusual it is to see so much brand new stock of products released over thirty years ago. It was a bit like visiting a museum, especially since it was all clearly labeled as ‘not for sale’.

And then I walked to the back and saw the three larger cases of TSR products! This is just one of them:

Dozens and dozens of Dungeons and Dragons books, as well as other games released by TSR over the years. I’ve got a good D&D collection myself, but not close to what I saw here. Take this for instance:

And many modules, some still sealed:

And obscure TSR games, like these:

Or this (still sealed) board game from 1982:

The manager saw me taking these photos and wandered over. He was younger than the guys I used to see here and I didn’t recognize him. I immediately asked “You bought this store didn’t you?” to which he laughed and confirmed.

We talked about this amazing collection of relics he now owned – some of which he wasn’t very knowledgeable about (I educated him) – and he was quite interested in my gamebook collection so I told him a bit about that.

And then he said out of the blue: “Want to see the basement?” Of course I instantly said yes, and he took me through two doors to a large metal staircase we descended down into a games room they use for events, then through another door into a large room filled with tall shelves stuffed with boxes of game materials collected by the previous owners over decades.

To say I was amazed is an understatement. The above photo shows boxes of Spellfire – the failed D&D card game from thirty years ago. Those boxes in the back? Sealed cases of the same game. He’s got dozens of boxes of each expansion, up to the 7th which almost no stores stocked since the game was already dead:

In the blurry background you can see boxes and boxes of other dead TCGs, including many I’d never heard of. These were stacked three or four shelves high up to ceilings well above my head!

As incredible as this was, we then turned to the D&D material, and he showed me this:

That’s a box of sealed copies of a D&D solo module from 1985. I’d estimate 30 or more, untouched for decades. And this was one of many boxes of sealed modules for TSR games, including D&D, Star Traveler, Top Secret, Gamma World, Indiana Jones, Marvel Super Heroes and probably more.

I took the above photo since I’d never seen a GURPS board game (which is still sealed and would sell for $300+ based on a quick internet search) but there was so much to see in this basement I barely noticed the stack of MSH modules behind and below the board game, or the pile of a couple of dozen Gamma World GM screens to the left.

I’ve read in the past about people stumbling on a cache of ‘new old stock’ in a warehouse somewhere, but it was quite an experience to see it. It’s all for sale too, although since TSR products are very collectible now it’s hardly cheap, and he’ll make a nice profit if he can sell it all. (I purchased a Blizzard Pass module, which I’ll keep sealed.)

There was some advertising material as well, including the above board for the 1976 (I think) edition of TSR’s Dungeon board game. This was heavy and may have been printed on or at least stuck to a wooden back! This is a true grail for a collector somewhere.

I regret not taking more photos, but I was simply overwhelmed by the magnitude of what I was seeing 🙂

He told me they’re slowly going through everything, including 25 long boxes of 1980s comics, many more sealed cases of RPG books and modules, and even “a box of novels signed by Gary Gygax” (!) and continuing to find treasures he didn’t know about when he bought the store. His goal is apparently to open a museum and if he ever does I’d certainly love to visit it!

Japan Extra: Cards

June 18, 2026

A bit of a specific post today: I wanted to see the most expensive trading card game cards I could find in card shops. This was an unexpectedly difficult exercise because most shops don’t sort out the pricey cards and just leave them in mysterious order in glass cases that look like this:

So it’s very likely I missed some.

Before I begin some simple rules. First I’m only doing game cards, so the above $3700 Dragonball Z card that came with a restaurant meal doesn’t count.

And neither does the above $12,500 set of trading cards that were lottery prizes, also for Dragonball Z.

Secondly, I’m only (obviously) including ones I personally saw and could photograph. There may have been more expensive YuGiOh cards in a case, but it had some sort of film on the glass making photography difficult!

So let’s begin, in (roughly) price order:

The Hololive card game hasn’t generated much excitement in the west, and even here in Japan I saw cards in few stores. The above was the most expensive I could find, at only about $50.

An even less common game as far as cards sold by secondary market stores goes is Wixoss, but this card at about $160 is apparently desirable to someone.

I’m fascinated by Duel Masters since to me it had the prettiest card and fanciest card treatments of any game but the cards have almost no value. Amazingly flashy holographic, etched foil cards go for under $1, and despite a good search the most expensive I could find was the above at $280!

One Piece was super popular here a year ago, but very much seems to have cooled off and it’s in fewer than half the stores, and even then the displays are small. I’m sure there’s cards out there selling for more than $560, but I didn’t see them.

Lorcana seems much more popular here than in the west, and I see it in about half the stores. Even so, $1600 is a pretty penny for a card from such a game. The store I saw this at had four of them, all at the same price. Even serialized Magic cards rarely fetch this amount!

I’ll put these two Cardfight Vanguard examples here although they somewhat break the rules since they’re not true game cards, but prizes that were awarded to tournament winners. At $1100 and $2000, that store had better hope a Vanguard player with very deep pockets – if they even exist – hears about these.

The most expensive YuGiOh card I saw was this one at about $1700, but this was in a case with dozens of other cards very close in price. I was surprised, since I had read YuGiOh didn’t have a strong secondary market.

Here’s one from the Dragonball card game. $820 for a single card for a game few play anymore. Who’s going to pay that?

Before I get to the two big ones – and you can predict the games – here’s a surprise. This is for the Kamen Rider Ganba Legends arcade game I played yesterday. Each time you play – which costs ¥100 – you get a card. Imagine one of them being ‘worth’ over $300!

Incidentally cards are big here now. I mean they’ve always been a popular hobby, but even small rinkydink shops are busy, and packs for recent expansions are sold out everywhere. You also rarely find booster packs in convenience shops anymore, probably because they sell out immediately.

So on to the two priciest examples:

A graded autographed alpha Black Lotus from Magic The Gathering can be yours for about $100,000 if you’re interested. If the gesde or autograph doesn’t interest you, the same shop had four other Lotuses from $40,000 and up.

Some of you will say graded cards don’t count (since they artificially add value in many peoples eyes) and that’s a fair point, so here’s a $6,000+ Mox Sapphire also from Magic. In fact this store had the complete ‘power nine’ which could be yours for about $28,000!

Here’s a $50,000 Pokemon card, although again it’s graded so some may call foul. Graded cards are rare here – many stores won’t touch them – but I saw this at a shop that only deals in graded cards and had many Pokemon examples for not much less than this.

At $9300, this was the highest ungraded Pokemon card I saw. There’s lots of pricey ($5000+) Pokemon cards right now, which probably befits the worlds most popular TCG.

Some crazy prices here wouldn’t you agree? Even crazier is many of these will sell, and the shops (like Big Magic, Haruheya and Mandarake) largely had different stock than when I was here in a January. And as I said, there’s probably even pricier ones in cases I just missed. Actually there’s so many card shops in Akiba alone I didn’t even go into all of them!

But I’ll end with this:

That’s a sign in Mandarake offering to pay $53,000 for a certain extremely rare Pokemon card. This means they have a buyer lined up, to which im sure they’ll sell for even more…

Robot Claw