The Memento archetype has been seeing a modest but consistent success rate this past month. With the winner’s spot from two different Yu-Gi-Oh! Champion Series (YCS) under its name, Memento decks are now getting rather popular, causing a surge in value on the second-hand market.
For one particular card, it had gone from obscurity to relatively high market demand.
Mementoal Tecuhtlica - Combined Creation is primarily considered the main deck boss monster card for the Memento archetype. It was released in the Valiant Smashers expansion back in 2023 alongside the rest of its archetype members.
Despite the card’s relatively high rarity prints, Combined Creation was exchanging hands for about $10 or less. That all changed once April 2025 rolled around, however.
YCS Houston was the last YCS before Konami announced the latest update to the Trading Card Game’s (TCG’s) Forbidden/Limited list. During this event, Pascal Manigat managed to win with his Memento deck, even against the full might of leading competitive archetypes (Ryzeal and Maliss).
Afterwards, Combined Creation easily doubled its asking price in the second-hand market. The weekend after YCS Houston showed that copies of Combined Creation were being sold at upwards of $20.
As you can see above, however, this success didn’t last long. Combined Creation’s price started to slide back into the $15 median before too long. This happened around the time of the update to the TCG’s Forbidden/Limited list.
And then from nowhere, prices just started to vertically climb. From April 9th to April 13th, the asking price for Combined Creation had peaked at a $40+ average.
As we can see in the current graph from TCGplayer, Combined Creation’s market value has backstepped yet again following that immense surge.
From its momentous $40 peak, it has now settled into a more modest $25 to $30 price range. This price seems to be holding a steady pattern so far.
The Memento archetype is a pretty budget-friendly deck to build. Most of its main deck components, like Mementotlan Angwitch or Mementotlan Tatsunootoshigo, are playing around a $12 value range. Even with Combined Creation’s overnight success, you only need a single copy of it most of the time.
In a game that’s widely accepted to have a monetary barrier to entry when it comes to the competitive level, this kind of market shift is still within acceptable bounds.
Ultimately, we’ll just have to see how long that will last. It wouldn’t be the first time that runaway success would artificially inflate the price of cards in the second-hand market.