Yu-Gi-Oh! is one of the world’s most popular trading card games. It’s loved and played by millions of fans. The only problem is: where do you get them? Plenty of online stores sell Yu-Gi-Oh cards, but they aren’t always authentic.

Most AliExpress Yu-Gi-Oh cards are fake. AliExpress seller guidelines dictate that no counterfeit products may be sold on their platform. However, there are very few strict authentication practices in place, leading to a lot of fake cards being sold.

Yu-Gi-Oh! cards are one of the many products sold on AliExpress, but are they real? Knowing how to differentiate between real and fake ones is essential if you don’t want to waste your hard-earned money on counterfeit cards. Many AliExpress vendors selling Yu-Gi-Oh cards market them as authentic, but that may only sometimes be the case.

Does AliExpress Sell Real Yu-Gi-Oh! Cards?

AliExpress is an e-commerce site based in China and mainly sells its products to people in other countries. It allows individuals and businesses to sell goods to consumers and delivers those products to the seller.

AliExpress itself doesn’t sell Yu-Gi-Oh cards. Instead, sellers list the product themselves for others to buy. The problem with this is that there is a high chance that the cards being sold are fake. There are certainly real Yu-Gi-Oh cards sold on AliExpress, but whether you can find them is another story.

Many of the Yu-Gi-Oh products you’ll see on AliExpress are not genuine but cheaply manufactured counterfeits. While AliExpress does not allow counterfeit products to be sold, many individuals and businesses list fake products as the real thing. Consumers might only discover this when the product arrives, and the seller has their money.

It’s common to see many Yu-Gi-Oh products in AliExpress’s listings, but you can assume that most of them are fake, while others are printed in Japanese. Japanese Yu-Gi-Oh cards can only be used in countries in Asia. This means that even if you know what a card says and its effects, you will not be allowed to use it in official (and probably unofficial) tournaments and matches.

AliExpress is not an authorized distributor of Yu-Gi-Oh products, so it can’t guarantee the authenticity of the cards listed on it by third-party sellers. If you’re thinking about buying Yu-Gi-Oh cards on this platform, there’s a high chance that they are fake.

How To Tell Whether AliExpress Yu-Gi-Oh! Cards Are Real

The first thing you can and should do to check whether Yu-Gi-Oh cards being sold on AliExpress are authentic is to look at the product images. You can look up the cards’ images on Konami’s official site and compare them. Some cards are bad counterfeits, and you will instantly be able to tell they are fake, while others are well-made and might need help to clock them.

So, compare the images and see if the picture on the AliExpress card matches the picture on the official card. There are also a few other things to look at when trying to identify fake cards. Official Yu-Gi-Oh cards are all printed the same way, and very few have printing and alignment errors.

First, compare the coloring of the cards. Fake cards may have been printed with low-quality ink and may have a different hue than real cards. It may be challenging to be sure there is a difference because of the lighting of the AliExpress picture. If you need more clarification on this, you can look at a couple of other things.

You can check if the proportions on the AliExpress cards match the features of the official picture. For example, the border, name, card picture, description block, and attack and defense section. Fake cards often have printing defects regarding text sizing and the different sections.

Once you have checked the card’s printing proportions, you can also look at the serial number printed on that card. Every Yu-Gi-Oh card has a serial number printed on it that displays which set the card is from. If the serial number doesn’t match or it doesn’t have one, you can be sure the card is fake.

The card details are the last things you can look at based on the images provided. There are quite a few details on an official Yu-Gi-Oh card. Manufacturers of fake cards either don’t pay attention to specific details, don’t use high-quality ink, or make mistakes. Compare the official card with the AliExpress image and check all the details. These include:

• The spelling of the name
• The card’s attribute
• The star levels and their position
• Spelling errors in the effect or description
• The shiny foil square in the corner with Yu-Gi-Oh printed horizontally

Sometimes, cards will have printed features that don’t belong to that card type. For example, a spell or trap card with level stars printed on it or a trap or spell card attribute on a monster card. A mistake like any of these will give a card away as a fake.

One way to tell whether Yu-Gi-Oh cards on AliExpress are real or fake without even looking at the cards is to check the seller’s feedback and ratings. Sellers of authentic products will typically have higher ratings than sellers of counterfeit products. Even if they have high ratings, it’s still a good idea to be cautious, as those could also be faked to fool consumers.

The last way you can check whether cards being sold on AliExpress are real or fake are by their price. Real Yu-Gi-Oh cards have a retail price and a market price. The market price is decided by how rare or special a card is. You can go to any trading card game website that lists current prices and compare them. If the price of a rare card seems too good to be true, odds are it is.

Conclusion

AliExpress is a platform for third parties to sell their products. Although it does not allow people to sell fake products, many are still listed. There may be genuine Yu-Gi-Oh cards for sale, but the odds aren’t in your favor. There are a couple of ways to check whether cards are real or fake, but it doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be able to correctly identify them.