Many people don’t know that Yu-Gi-Oh was originally a manga before it was a card game. The manga started in 1996, while the trading card game started in 1999 in Japan and 2002 in the United States of America. It has sold around 25.5 billion cards sold worldwide. I remember waking up Saturday mornings just so I could watch the newest episode of the first season of Yu-Gi-Oh and try to make my decks be like the ones in the TV show.

While the Yu-Gi-Oh hype may have simmered down in recent years, there are definitely still those dedicated fans building the perfect decks, or collecting those extremely rare and expensive cards that are out there. They're searching for that one card that would complete their deck or complete their perfect collection. Always on the lookout for those rare cards, these collectors are hoping to find those cards that always seem to escape them.

Thousands of cards that have been made within the Yu-Gi-Oh trading card game. If you still have some of those old cards back when you were young, it might be worth looking at them again to see if any of those cards have any value to them. It might also be nice to just take a trip down memory lane! Some of these cards have some incredible value to them, but most have almost no worth to them whatsoever. We’ll look at thirty cards, some more valuable and some a lot less so.

30 Worthless: Zone Eater (41 Cents)

Starting off strong, we have the Zone Eater, a level one monster with 250 attack and 200 defense. This card is considered to be one of the most useless cards in the Yu-Gi-Oh series.

Its special effect is somewhat useful, but because of its low defense and attack, it hardly ever gets used in battle. If you find a Zone Eater in your deck, might as well just throw it out and never look for another one. Avoid this card.

29 Worth A Ton: Gold Sarcophagus ($1,375)

Looking at a semi-valuable card, we have the Golden Sarcophagus. It’s a spell card that banishes a card, then later adds it to your hand. During 2005-2006, at the Pharaoh's Tour and the Shonen Jump tournaments, twenty cards were made for the winners of these tournaments.

You can tell that it’s one of the reward cards from the championships by the code, which notes its exclusivity. You can find that code at the bottom of the card art.

28 Worthless: Goyo Chaser (75 Cents)

Back at it with a worthless card, the Goyo Chaser is a level five monster that needs a tuner and a non-tuner monster to summon the Goyo Chaser.

Don’t chase this card.

This card just never got the special treatment that other cards seem to get. It has a decent enough effect of taking defeated monsters from your opponent to your side of the battlefield, but it's not worth the effort of finding this card and adding it to your deck.

27 Worth A Ton: Doomcaliber Knight ($1,500)

A level four monster card, this was a prize card awarded at the Shonen Jump 2005 Tournament to the first, second, and third place winners. The price ranges anywhere from $700 to about $1,500, depending on the condition of the card.

This card is also quite useful to be used in a deck, as it’s a strong card with 1900 attack and 1800 defense. In addition, the card's effect can be used as a tribute and destroy your opponent's monsters. So if you have a little more money, keep an eye out for the Doomcaliber Knight.

26 Worthless: Cold Feet (99 Cents)

Cold Feet is a spell card; its effect is that you cannot activate, set, or use the effects of any Spell/Trap cards this turn. Why would you ever want a card that negates your spells or traps? It doesn’t make much sense.

Cold feet isn’t very rare, so you can easily find it if you need to make a deck that has negative synergies with itself; but why would you want to make a deck like that in the first place?

25 Worth A Ton: Blood Mefist ($1,500)

The reward of the 2011 Yu-Gi-Oh championship, only a small handful of these were made for sale. The rarest Synchro card out there, this card is incredibly powerful and useful when used in the right hands.

It is a level eight monster with 2800 attack and 1300 defense, and once per turn, you can inflict 300 damage to your opponent for each card they own. In addition, if they set a trap or spell card, you can also deal 300 damage to them.

24 Worthless: Hydra Viper (99 Cents)

Along the lines of bad cards, the Hydra Viper certainly comes to mind. While it’s a level four monster with 1800 attack and 400 defense, in order to attack you have to tribute a water type monster, attacking three times in each battle phase.

The Hydra Viper isn’t a good addition to your deck because of the grand negative effect it has whenever it attacks. If you can come up with a powerful way to use this card, then go right ahead.

23 Worth A Ton: Chinese Dark Magician ($1,500)

What makes this card valuable is that only around 100 cards of Chinese Dark Magician were ever made. It was made in celebration of the well-known character in the Shonen Jump weekly magazine. Making this a rare and valuable card.

Chinese Dark Magician is a level seven monster with 2500 attack and 2100 defense. A solid card in any deck, Dark Magician is a famous character from the anime show and its worth is well known.

22 Worthless: Larvae Moth (99 Cents)

A near worthless level two monster that can’t be normally summoned and can only be summoned with a Petit Moth equipped with a cocoon of evolution. The Larvae Moth doesn’t have a lot going for it; it’s a pretty mediocre card as far as bad cards go.

It’s a fairly well-published card, so it doesn’t even have that going for it. Maybe the Larvae Moth will grow into something great, but it’s not going to happen anytime soon.

21 Worth A Ton: Des Volstgalph ($1,530)

Des Volstgalph is an extremely rare card with only about twenty cards ever made. Given out in the 2005 Pharaoh's Tournament as a prize card, this is an extremely rare card that is hard to come by. As well as being valuable, it has 2200 attack and 1700 defense and deals 500 damage to the opponent every time a monster is sent to the graveyard.

While you may never have owned this card, there always is a slight chance you might have acquired this card in your old deck. Be sure to look out for this valuable card out there in the wild.

20 Worthless: Rocket Arrow Express (99 Cents)

When a card has a 5,000 attack, you might think that it would be worth more than a dollar. Then you factor in that it also has zero defense and then the price makes a little more sense. Being a level ten monster that forces you to discard your entire hand just to keep it in battle? Not really worth it.

Throwing away your hand to deal 5,000 damage seems like a good trade-off, but you can’t control any monsters or spells, so maybe not.

19 Worth A Ton: Shrink ($2,000)

Normally you could find one of these cards for about a dollar on eBay, but the code SJC-EN003 on the card means it is apart of the Shonen Jump Championship set. With only 26 made with this specific set, this tiny card is worth quite a lot.

While the spell card just halves the attack of a targeted monster, with only the 26 copies made it’s quite a collectors choice. Be sure to double check for the code, otherwise, it’s just another card.

18 Worthless: Mucus Yolk (99 Cents)

This card gains 1,000 attack every time it attacks your opponent's life points directly, so it has a pretty decent effect. But it has only a measly total of 100 defense, and it never got any special treatment.

No cool holographic, no limited edition card, just a gross name. This card just got some bad luck with its design and effect. But if you want to make a joke deck, this card would fit nicely into said joke deck.

17 Worth A Ton: Minerva, The Exalted Lightsworn ($2,000)

Only super and ultra rare cards of Minerva have ever been made, that and the highly effective card effect make this an extremely rare card in the series. The card's effect is that you can send the top three cards of your deck to the graveyard, then draw three lightsworn cards from your deck. That, and you can destroy monsters based on the number of lightsworn cards you have discarded, so that’s kinda nice.

16 Worthless: Needle Ball (99 Cents)

What is super cool about Needle Ball is that not only does it haunt your dreams with its nightmare face, Needle Balls effect is you take 2000 points of life damage to deal 1000 points to your opponent.

It’s a bad card with a weird design to it; no wonder why no one wants to buy this card. You might as well just throw away this card and hope it doesn’t reappear after you've thrown it away. No one needs this card.

15 Worth A Ton: Crush Card Virus ($2,500)

Being featured in the anime in none other than Seto Kaiba's deck, the Crush Card Virus is a very powerful trap card. You sacrifice one monster with 1000 attack or less, your opponent doesn’t take damage till the next turn, and you get to look at their hand and destroy any monster with more than 1500, then your opponent can also destroy up to three monsters with 1500 attack in their deck. The sheer power and popularity of this card make it very hard to find, especially the 2007 tournament prize card.

14 Worthless: Missing Force (99 Cents)

This card's special effect is to sacrifice itself in order to control one of your opponent's monsters until the end of your turn. It's an otherwise worthless effect, because it’s not even the entire time.

Missing Force is your average run-of-the-mill card that can be found in any normal card pack really. This card does not have a ton going for it in any aspect really, except maybe the card art, making it a near worthless card.

13 Worth A Ton: Swords Of Revealing Light (Bandai) ($4,000)

What makes this card valuable is that it was made by Bandai rather than the company who usually makes the Yu-Gi-Oh cards, Konami. This is classified as a super rare card because not many Bandai cards were released for sale to the public. They were mainly created for promotional use.

It is also a highly recognizable card from the anime series, adding to the value of the card. If you’re able to find this card, you’ve just stumbled across a small fortune.

12 Worthless: Sparks (99 Cents)

This card is pretty much next to useless in terms of practicality, a spell card that inflicts a grand total of 200 damage to your opponent's life points. It may work when you need it most, but all in all, it just is more of an annoyance than anything.

It sells for a very low price even in a set of three perfectly mint condition cards, which for mint condition cards isn’t a whole lot when you think about it.

11 Worth A Ton: Cyber-Stein ($4,400)

While this may seem like a normal card, it's honestly anything but. The winners of the Shonen Championship got this as a prize card, and with only 18 rumored to have ever been made, this card fetches a high price.

While its effect and attack and defense aren’t much to talk about, Cyber-Stein makes up for that with that special code SJC-EN001 at the bottom of the card art. Making Cyber Stein an extremely valuable card to own.