Marketing is about creating, communicating, delivering, and capturing value. i found some Yu-Gi-Oh trading cards lying around the house today and suddenly realized how marketing has created value for these cards. Its marketing is brilliant!
The marginal cost of making one of these cards is barely anything. Its just a printed card. however, they are sold for im guessing around $5 for a pack of 6 cards? Some individual cards can be sold for hundreds of dollars.
So i wondered, where did the value come from?
The developers made Yu-Gi-Oh cartoon series its aired in the Europe, Americas, Australia, and East and South-east Asia, to gain recognition and reach a significant audience. When there are enough people watching this cartoon in one area, they start to have interactions and will likely to purchase the cards and make their decks of 40 to 100 cards and play against each other. to build stonger deck, these people start to trade their cards and buy/sell online and this basically created a free market in which the value of the card is determined by supply and demand of it.
The increase the value of the cards, the producer create special limited editions of certain cards that many players and collectors would pay high price for. Also, cards with stronger ability in the game play is also less available so its demand is high.
Started in 1998, Yu-Gi-Oh is still playing on TV internationally and there are people holding tournaments and community games regularly. Having sold more than 22 billion cards in 2009, Yu-Gi-Oh is named the top selling trading card in the world by Guinness world records. Although i dont know a lot about it, wikipedia says it continues to gain popularioty in the world.
One reply on “Yu-Gi-Oh cards”
Yeah I agree, Yu-Gi-Oh took over elementary schools by the thousands. I think its the combination of a entertaining TV show series, and cool looking cards whihc led to its popularity. Lets duel sometime since you have cards at home. I am a pro.