The second-hand market for the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game (TCG) is no stranger to sudden shifts.
Even obscure cards get a little bit of time in the limelight because some players want to experiment with an upcoming competitive format. For better or worse, that seems to be exactly what is happening now.
Ghost Ship
First released in 2011's Generation Force expansion, Ghost Ship is an old and largely forgotten Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG card.
Ghost Ship is one of those cards people would usually declare as a ‘pack filler’ for its set. As a standard Rare card, copies of Ghost Ship were sitting at less than half a dollar for the last week on the second-hand market.
Then, all of a sudden, copies were exchanging hands and prices started to hopscotch upwards. Some copies of Ghost Ship were being bought for between two and four dollars, and there were a few near-mint 1st editions that practically skipped to the $5 to $7.
In the grand scheme of the hobby, a $7 card shouldn’t be that concerning. That said, the sudden movement on the market practically happened overnight without any obvious reason.
So it does beg us to look a little closer and see if we can find some reason for what’s happening.
Potential K9 Support
On its own, Ghost Ship offers nothing that can’t be replicated by other cards. It’s just a body that special summons itself if you can banish a Light monster you own from the graveyard. Notably, however, Ghost Ship is a Level 5 monster.
Justice Hunters and the Level 5-focused K9 archetype within it are coming in by next month.
The K9 units have been making a name for themselves over at the Official Card Game (OCG), gaining top representation at tournaments while paired up with other archetypes like Crystron or Vanquish Soul.
While the history of Yu-Gi-Oh! has usually been charted by singular cards with overwhelming capabilities (e.g., Maxx "C"), there’s usually an oft-forgotten card that can allow decks easier access to combos they normally wouldn’t have.
Ghost Ship has the distinct feature of being one of the few Level 5 Light Fiend monsters in Yu-Gi-Oh!
The writing is a little on the wall here, but Ghost Ship can allow the K9 archetype easier synergy with arguably one of the best engines in the game.
We don’t know the specifics on how viable K9 with a Fiendsmith line-up would be against other juggernauts in the meta of the TCG.
The OCG, though, has had a pioneer already. Over in the Malaysia WCQ held back in May, a player by the name of Linus Teo managed to make it to the top 32 with a K9-Fiendsmith deck.
The deck list doesn’t have Ghost Ship, but the way of thinking as well as the card pool are different over there. Notably, this is still unexplored territory as far as deck crafting is concerned.
Given how the market had suddenly shifted, there seem to be people in the TCG who think there’s an inherent value in Ghost Ship for the upcoming format once K9, the Yummies, and Dragon Tail make their debut in the TCG.
If more decks that sport Ghost Ship make it to the top cut of tournaments, people will start to notice.
Due to the lack of reprints, this currently $7 card might end up becoming an unexpected gold mine for both sellers and players.