Part 1 of my first photoshoot regarding the Magpie Factor- Yu-Gi-Oh!

I figured that there may as well be a "field guide" of sorts detailing all the rarities this crazy game has. No, seriously, it has what...10? 9?

Common - Nothing shiny or special at all. Short-print commons do not look any different, but are a PAIN IN THE BEHIND to pull.

Rare - Silver title. These occur once per pack. There was also a gold-titled Insect Queen in the Japanese game, but this has never occurred since then.

Super Rare - Foil image.

Ultra Rare - Gold title, foil image.

Ultimate Rare - Gold title; foil, embossed image, level stars, and attribute. After "Soul of the Duelist," they were reprints of the Super and Ultra Rare cards in the set; English/international sets also got Ultimate Rare Rare reprints.

The reason I'm showing 3 of them here is to illustrate the differences between the Japanese and English foil etching, and, in the case of Harpie Queen, an Ultimate Rare Rare - something that didn't exist in the original Japanese game. In retrospect, I should've added an Ultimate Rare Japanese Gemini Elf to this picture. The edit job on HQ is horrible, but this isn't about edits, it's about shiny.

Secret Rare - Shinier foil picture, shinier title is the basic jist. In older sets, there were only one or two SCRs per set; more recently, Konami has stuffed a LOT more into international sets.

The English and Japanese Secret Rares are quite different visually: The Japanese foil is tesselated with square designs while the EN foil is more linear, and the text is also holographed (is that a word?) differently. Promos often use either the Japanese SCR foil, English SCR foil, or Super Rare foil.

Parallel Rare - A glossy coating with tesselated lines (as seen in the Japanese Secret Rare) covers the whole card. The title may or may not be etched into the glossy layer. Parallel Rares are so called because they "parallel" certain cards of the set.

Ghost/Holo Rare - Holo title, TRULY hologram foil. These are usually the cover card of the set. They're cool for a while, but get old pretty fast.

And now for the oddballs:

Secret Ultra Rare was a one-time dealie in which UDE deliberately printed a few promos with Ultra/Super Rare ("plain") foil and holofoil text. I have not seen these since the older Tin promos (like the Command Knight pictured.)

Duel Terminal cards are usually treated as all being "Parallel Rare," but since some of the cards are new, this is inaccurate. I have chosen to treat it as its own rarity here.

Gold Rare is the newest rarity, usually only available in "Gold Series" packs. Not only is the title glided like on an Ultra, the picture is similarly foiled, and the Level Stars, borders, and attribute shine.

I hope this was helpful to some of you! It gave me great practice with using the no-flash setting on my camera!