December 15th, 2004 rocked the TCG industry, and it will forever be remembered as the day the first North American Cyber-Stein was sold. Clocking in at a whopping $23,000, this much anticipated and eagerly sought Yu-Gi-Oh! promo outperformed even the most generous estimates made by experienced secondary market professionals.

Cyber-Stein, the top prize for competitors at this year’s Shonen Jump Championship Series, has always been one of the most talked-about Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. It dominated the Japanese tournament scene for over a year as a key card in the metagame-crushing Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon/Megamorph combo deck that changed the face of the Japanese game. Despite having not been released in North America until last month, every North American player has coveted this card at one time or another.

The fact that North America has not yet seen the release of a playable Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon hasn’t stopped Cyber-Stein from being ridiculously useful. With Mystic Tomato seeing play in a huge variety of tournament-worthy decks, Cyber-Stein can act as an easy access, super-powered Magical Scientist that’s capable of a kind of versatility and raw power that the little bald-headed fusionist never even dreamed of. Since Cyber-Stein is tournament legal, winning one means that not only does a duelist have an awesome new collectible or college fund, they can also use it to kick some serious behind.

Though Cyber-Stein is definitely a cool addition to the game, one really does have to examine what the final auction price says about Yu-Gi-Oh! as a whole. In a year that began with some industry professionals believing that Upper Deck’s juggernaut was making its way out, the market leading TCG once again overcame all expectations of sales and player responses. The fact that a new and rare promo card can sell for such an incredible amount is a testament to a simple fact—Yu-Gi-Oh! is still at the top of the heap!

I had the pleasure of speaking with Gerald Sansolis, the man who sold the Cyber-Stein on behalf of its winner, John Umali. Sansolis runs Umali’s home store, Comic Odyssey, in National City, California. He listed the card and managed the auction. Umali’s only goal in selling the card was to raise money for a trip to a future Shonen Jump Championship Series event. Needless to say, he’ll probably attend quite a few now, courtesy of his new bank roll. When asked, Sansolis echoed the opinion of many retailers supporting Yu-Gi-Oh! by saying, “Upper Deck/Konami finally got it right. Putting up a card this rare as a prize for the American market is brilliant.”

The auction itself pulled in some record numbers beyond the expectation-shattering final price. “My record as an eBay PowerSeller for the most hits on a single auction listing was 612 hits,” said Sansolis. “By the time Cyber-Stein had ended, there were over 123,000 hits on the auction. Saying that this number of hits is amazing is an understatement. As of this report, the number of hits is over 133,000. By the way, Cyber-Stein was the number one watched item on eBay . . . in the last three days of its auction. That in itself is amazing.”

Players seemed to share Sansolis’s excitement. The impact of the Cyber-Stein auction on the game’s communities was nothing short of massive. Every message board was abuzz with speculation right up until the auction’s closing moments, and the hype never really died down. Love it or hate it, duelists want a Cyber-Stein of their own. With nineteen more Shonen Jump Championships on the way for 2005, they’ll have plenty of chances, but now that Yu-Gi-Oh! fans have seen what they’ll be dueling for, the competition will be huge! Duelists will certainly be lining up in droves for their shot at winning the rarest North American Yu-Gi-Oh! card ever to be printed.

Only time will tell what continued influence Cyber-Stein will have on the North American Yu-Gi-Oh! scene. One thing is for sure, though—2005’s Shonen Jump Championship Series couldn’t be any hotter, and Metagame.com will be right there to give you the blow-by-blow while you wait for the Series to hit your area!

Going to be in California? Check out Comic Odyssey, and maybe you’ll get a chance to throw down with Shonen Jump Champion John Umali. Special thanks go out to Comic Odyssey’s Gerard Sansolis for his time and enthusiasm.