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A Yu-Gi-Oh card that only has one copy in existence, making it easily the rarest in the world, is being sold in an auction next month.
Card collecting is quite the business these days, with some cards going for ridiculously high prices. Rarer cards obviously go for more, and Tyler the Great Warrior, what is undoubtedly the rarest Yu-Gi-Oh card ever printed, is currently planned to be sold off this coming April (via Kotaku). The reason the card is so rare is because it was made for Tyler Gressle, who in 2005 received it as part of the Make-A-Wish Foundation, a non-profit that attempts to make the wishes of children with “critical illnesses” come true.
In 2005, Gressle was suffering from a rare liver cancer that only had 200 cases reported in the whole of the US. In a video talking to Yu-Gi-Oh content creator Alex Cimo, Gressle quipped, “I wanted a Porsche, but I wasn’t old enough.” So in turn, he had a Yu-Gi-Oh card made just for him, where he was flown out to New York to meet Kazuki Takahashi, creator of Yu-Gi-Oh, as well as the voice cast for the anime.
Takahashi made a couple of designs based on Gressle’s favourite character, Future Trunks from Dragon Ball Z–the correct choice–and Gressle could choose which one. In turn, that’s how Tyler the Great Warrior was made, which had been stored in a glass case and hadn’t been removed since then, but has since been graded.
Gressle was obviously fortunate enough to survive his illness, and hadn’t planned on ever selling the card, but in his interview with Cimo, he said, “I want to part with the card now after so much time, because I think the anticipation has really been killing some really avid collectors… I’m not getting any younger, I want to start a family, I want to own and operate my own business and also help my community as well as travel and see my brother in Switzerland.”
According to a statement provided to Kotaku from Cimo’s representatives, “We are in uncharted territory here as there has never been a 1/1 Yu-Gi-Oh! card publicly sold,” making it pretty unclear how much the card could sell for.
Last year, Takahashi unfortunately died in a diving incident when he attempted to rescue others that were drowning.
