ToyWiz Weekly Blast: New Arrivals & Gift Ideas

ZEXAL Photon Shockwave Booster Packs - released 11/15/11 100 new ways to power up your deck or build an exciting new one! Duelists who bought Lost Sanctuary Structure Deck will be thrilled to find more than 10 new LIGHT monsters, Spells, and Trap Cards to power up their LIGHT monsters. Fans of Generation Force, Hidden Arsenal 5: Steelswarm Invasion, and the Gates of the Underworld Structure Deck will also be glad to find all new cards that work together nicely with any of those releases. 100-card complete set: 48 Common Cards, 20 Rare Cards, 14 Super Rare Cards, 10 Ultra Rare Cards, 8 Secret Rare Cards Need more YuGiOh gift ideas? Click here for our holiday special edition YuGiOh guide.

Pokemon Black & White Noble Victories - released 11/16/11 Booster Packs and a special edition set of 3 Booster Packs & 1 Foil Promo Card are shipping now! These make great stocking stuffers and gifts! And if you missed our top Pokemon gift edition, click here for even more ideas on choosing the perfect gift for the PokeMaster on your list.

OYO Major League Baseball Minifigures Officially licensed building-toy figures of your favorite MLB player with rotating arms, bending knees, and player likeliness. Comes with bat, gripping ball, glove, stand, and unique OYO DNA number. Compatible with most other brand name building toys like Lego and Mega Bloks. Collect. Build. Play! Collect your favorite players. It's like a 3-D baseball card!

Marvel Minimates NYCC 2011 New York Comic Con Exclusive 4-Pack Deadpool Corps Deadpool, Championpool, Lady Deadpool, Kidpool & Headpool are coming to you straight from NYCC - a fun and unsual offering from Diamond Select's Minimates! And if Deadpool's not your thing, we have a huge selection of other Minimates here!

Round 5 UFC Ultimate Collector Series 9 Pre-orders Round 5 just announced it's new lineup, along with a prototype photo of the new Jason "Mayhem" Miller figure! These are due out in April, but you can reserve yours now. This release: Jason Miller, Ben Henderson, Don Frye, Chris Leben, Nick Diaz & Cain Velasquez Looking for favorite UFC fighters in time for gift-giving? Click here to choose from our huge in-stock selection!

If you're looking for deep discounts, early holiday gifts and a lot of bang for your buck, be sure to hit our BLOWOUT SALE! New items are added almost every day! Combine our markdowns with your coupon code for rock-bottom prices on tons of popular toys and games.

New YuGiOh Releases at ToyWiz - Gates of the Underworld & Rare Promo

From our release mailer, announcing two great items from YuGiOh! shipping today:

	YUGIOH! GATES OF THE UNDERWORLD STRUCTURE DECK - Releases today, October 18, 2011!
	NEW YuGiOh Structure Deck: In June, the Lost Sanctuary Structure Deck gave Duelists the forces of the heavens to command. Now, in this diabolical companion deck, Duelists can match them with the forces of perdition! The Dark World monsters are the fearsome warlords and armies of the underworld. First debuting in 2005, they've lurked on the edges of the tournament scene ever since. This Structure Deck gives Dark World monsters major refit, to bring them up to modern Dueling standards. The core of this set is comprised of Dark World cards which also includes 5 brand new Dark World cards. 37 Common Cards 2 Super Rare Cards 1 Ultra Rare Card 1 Rulebook 1 Game Mat 1 Dueling Guide SHIPPING OCTOBER 18, 2011 - PRE-ORDERS WILL BE FILLED FIRST! SHOP NOW
	YuGiOh Shonen Jump Promo - Ultra Rare JUMP - EN056 - ENDLESS DECAY is also shipping now! *If you have2000 or less Life Points, you can Special Summon this card from your hand. When this card is Normal or Special Summoned, its ATK becomes equal to half your opponent's Life Points. SHOP NOW

Yu-Gi-Oh! Breaks World Record!

KONAMI announced today that it broke it's own record in the Guiness Book of World Records, with over 25 billion  Yu-Gi-Oh! Cards sold as of March 31, 2011. (25,175,567,833 if you want to be specific!)

I did a little math for you...and I'm bad at math, so if you want to fact-check me, go ahead! But calculating the size of a standard Yu-Gi-Oh! card gave me these fun numbers:

• Laid end-to-end lengthwise, all the Yu-Gi-Oh! cards sold would circle the earth 54 times.


• Spread out with no overlaps or spaces, they would cover over 49 square miles - enough to cover the state of Mississippi or Pennsylvania with cards left over!


• Stacked in one giant monster deck, they'd reach 137,661,678.88 feet tall...the height of 4,744 Mount Everests atop one another!

To celebrate this fun event, we're cooking up a great new contest! Keep watching for information, or follow us on Twitter and Facebook to learn the details.

What else would this number of cards cover? Get out your calculators and check my math or let me know how you'd compare the size of Yu-Gi-Oh's total card sales!

Hidden Arsenal 4: This Time It’s Personal!

Jackalope here with a look at the brand new Hidden Arsenal 4 set. I’m deviating from my prior YuGiOh articles as I’m going to crack (open) an entire case of Hidden Arsenal 4 boxes. Let’s take a quick look at the stats on that.

[caption id="attachment_870" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Step 1: Prepare you case for skinning."][/caption]

1 Case of Hidden Arsenal 4 = 12 Boxes = 288 Packs = 1440 Cards.

Now most of you are not opening a case of cards, so why am I going through the trouble of writing this article on this? Simple, my friends: Averages! Yes, when you break a box of cards there is a high degree of randomness to it, but when you break a case you can see trends and averages to better give you an idea of what you can expect out of a box. This might help you decide whether it makes sense for you to buy a box to try for certain cards or to just pony up for the single cards.

[caption id="attachment_871" align="alignnone" width="285" caption="Step 2: Discard the booster skins"][/caption]

Let’s look at some more delicious numbers! In that case of 1440 cards you will get exactly 288 Secret Rare cards and 1152 Super Rare cards. There are 20 different Secret Rare cards in the set and 40 different Super Rare cards in the set so if we go just by averages you should get approximately 14.4 of every Secret Rare and 28.8 of every Super Rare.

Spoiler Alert! It does NOT work out that way.

[caption id="attachment_872" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Step 3: Arrange your card filets in preparation for sorting"][/caption]

“Well Jackalope, how does it work out?” you’re asking, and I am glad you did! Let’s look at a few more numbers, specifically the best and/or most valuable cards in the set and see how many we got:

x7 Dragunity Knight – Trident $ 17.99
x8 Trishula, Dragon of the Ice Barrier $64.99
x8 Dragunity Knight – Barcha $7.99
x8 Naturia Landoise $19.99
x12 The Fabled Unicore $5.99
x12 The Fabled Cerburrel $16.99
x15 Jurrac Meteor $6.99
x16 Neo Flamvell Sabre $5.99
x17 Naturia Exterio $4.99

Note that all these cards are valued at or over 5 dollars to show you what “money*” cards you can expect in your theoretical box purchase.

Looking at the numbers we got you can expect one, possibly two of: Jurrac Meteor, Neo Flamvell Sabre & Naturia Exterio. You can with come certainly assume you’ll get one each of these in your box: The Fabled Cerburrel & The Fabled Unicore. And lastly you have a 2/3rds chance of getting the big three, and almost certainly one of the following in your box: Dragunity Knight – Barcha, Dragunity Knight – Trident, Naturia Landoise & Trishula, Dragon of the Ice Barrier.

What does that tell you? Well if you are looking for three Trishula, Dragon of the Ice Barrier cards you would have to buy the equivalent of 5 or 6 boxes to ensure you got them, at a cost of $79.99. That’s quite a hefty price tag as opposed to buying the single cards outright, but in addition you’ll get a whole lot of other cards. You've got lots of options for getting what you want: buying boxes and hoping for lucky pulls will give you lots of extra cards for trading, or you can purchase the individual cards you need.

[caption id="attachment_873" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Step 4: Portion out and serve your collection. Bon Appetit!"][/caption]

Only you can decide whether or not purchasing a box is worthwhile to you, or if buying the few single cards you need to finish your deck fits the bill, but hopefully this shows you the average odds you have of getting the card(s) you’re looking for!

Exit, stage right!

* Money cards refer to the expensive cards out of a set. Those can be valuable due to demand or rarity, oftentimes both.

Please keep in mind all prices are subject to change and these are the prices of the cards as of this writing which was on the day of release for the set.

The Battle of the Box

Jackalope here with another cost/value analysis. This time of an older set. A lot of players and collectors feel that there is less value when you buy an older box and open it. This is for various reasons, but the most commonly held belief is that the longer a set is out, the more of it gets broken (opened) and the more single cards there are in the market. I’m going to do a single box breakdown for you here. This is just one random box that I opened and is not typical of all boxes, but it gives you a good idea what you should expect if you bought a box of YuGiOh 5D's Starstrike Blast.



[caption id="attachment_819" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="So serene, just sitting there…"][/caption] 

[caption id="attachment_820" align="alignnone" width="293" caption="NOM NOM NOM!"][/caption]

Okay, let’s look at what makes up a box:
24 Packs, 9 cards in each pack. Each pack will contain at least 1 Rare card and may contain a foil card.

YuGiOh 5D's 2011 Duelist Tin

Jackalope here with…Ohhhh New Duelist Tin!

[caption id="attachment_732" align="alignleft" width="120" caption="Just sitting here on my desk, asking to be opened…"][/caption]

I’ve always been a fan of the duelist tin product from both a retailer’s and a consumer’s point of view. Why you ask? Value, this product has solid value to it and what means is you as the consumer get great value for your dollar. Let’s take a look at one of the tins (along with pictures of the tin I’m opening for this post).

 

 

 

As you can see you get several things in the tin:

YuGiOh R!

Jackalope here with great news for old school duelists everywhere: there is a new Manga coming out.
The Manga will most likely be released later this year, featuring the original cast of Yu-Gi-Oh!.
After GX, and 5 D's it looks like Yu-Gi-Oh will be heading back to its roots. All the old favorites will be featured in the new Manga and Konami has announced issues will contain a promo card.
Will Konami follow through with the card game?
Will they go back to feature cards related to those characters and create new cards based on what is seen in the Manga?
Will an Anime follow? We don't know too much yet but it is exciting times.
What do you think?

YuGiOh Special Edition: Cost Vs. Value

Jackalope here with a thought on the Raging Battle Special Edition coming out.
Unless Konami has a sudden change of heart, it looks like the S.E. products are here to stay. For those unfamiliar, shortly after a set comes out, an S.E. pack follows, containing three Booster Packs from the set and two reprint foil cards from prior sets. Depending on one's point of view, the foil cards can be either a boon or a bane to the game.
Let's look at the good points and the bad.
The Good: New players (or players on a budget) have a chance to get some of the most sought after and powerful cards of the time. The cards also help retailers sell product as they are a draw for consumers to buy multiple Special Editions.
The Bad: Value murder. Cards like Gladiator Beast Heraklinos go from a $80+ card to a $5+ card seemingly overnight. Consumers who had bought the cards are now out of money while retailers who stocked it are stuck with dead product. Some retailers may also be weary of keeping and or stocking money cards for fear they might be reprinted in this way.
I can see both points of view and I can appreciate either.
What do you think?