A Chinese court has been forced to cancel an auction for the possessions of a criminal after the public went absolutely buck wild over a rare Yu-Gi-Oh card.
According to IGN, the court had to cancel the auction after bidding reached an astronomical $US13.4 million ($17.6 million), with auctioneers citing suspected foul play as a reason for halting bids. The card in question – the Blue-Eyes White Dragon – is a special 2019 edition featuring a 20th anniversary frame. Only 500 of the ultra rare cards were printed, so it’s a hot commodity among Yu-Gi-Oh fans.
However, it’s worth noting that the card is currently valued at approximately 200-300,000 Yuan (roughly $40-60,000), which is obviously considerably less than people were bidding. More than 18,000 people bid on the card at auction, quickly skyrocketing the price to upwards of 500,000 Yuan within minutes of the auction beginning.
“The price is seriously inconsistent with the actual bidding price, and malicious bidding behaviour is suspected,” the auction platform, Alibaba Group, said in a statement to the South China Morning Post. “This auction has been suspended.”
Interestingly, the card hasn’t even been authenticated yet, so there’s every chance it’s not even real. Honestly, pour one out for whichever poor soul spends $17 million on a fake Yu-Gi-Oh card.
The card was previously owned by Zhang Yujie, who has been sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
He was sentenced last year after embezzling millions of yuan from a government fund – which is obviously super illegal – and has precisely zero chance of being released.
Naturally, this means all of his worldly possessions are being auctioned off to the highest bidder. But considering he’s quite literally spending life behind bars for fraud charges, I wouldn’t exactly be hedging my $17 million bets on the authenticity of his Yu-Gi-Oh cards. Other possessions in the auction included a gold-and-diamond bedazzled PS4 and multiple Nintendo Switch consoles.
It’s also not the first Yu-Gi-Oh auction to hit eye-watering amounts. Earlier this year, an aggrieved seller posted their ex-husband’s Yu-Gi-Oh collection on Yahoo! Auctions. The collection hit a high of $246,625 (20,503,000 million yen) before it was suspended.
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