Toys & Collectibles

Yu-Gi-Oh! (Japanese: 遊☆戯☆王, Hepburn: Yū-Gi-Ō!, lit. “King of Games”) is a Japanese manga series about trading card gaming written and illustrated by Kazuki Takahashi. It was serialized in Shueisha‘s Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine between September 1996 and March 2004.

The plot follows the story of a boy named Yugi Mutou, who solves the ancient Millennium Puzzle. Yugi awakens a gambling alter-ego or spirit within his body that solves his conflicts using various games.

The Upper Deck Company, LLC (colloquially as Upper Deck and Upper Deck Authenticated, Ltd. in the UK), founded in 1988, is a private company primarily known for producing trading cards. Its headquarters are in Carlsbad, California, United States.

The company also produces sports related items such as figurines and die-cast toys on top of having exclusive agreements to produce memorabilia (under the brand name “Upper Deck Authenticated”) with such athletes as Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, LeBron James, Ben Simmons, Wayne Gretzky, Connor McDavid and Serena Williams. Under the Upper Deck Entertainment name, the company also produced card games such as World of Warcraft and Vs. System.

Upper Deck is also the current licensor of the O-Pee-Chee brand since 2007, having released several baseball and ice hockey card collections

Panini is an Italian company headquartered in Modena, Italy, named after the Panini brothers who founded it in 1961. The company produces books, comics, magazines, stickers, trading cards and other items through its collectibles and publishing subsidiaries. Panini distributes its own products, and products of third party providers. Panini maintains a Licensing Division to buy and resell licences and provide agency for individuals and newspapers seeking to purchase rights and comic licences. Through Panini Digital the company uses voice-activated software to capture football statistics, which is then sold to agents, teams, media outlets and video game manufactures.

New Media operates Panini’s on-line applications, and generates income through content and data sales. Forming a partnership with FIFA in 1970, Panini published its first FIFA World Cup sticker album for the 1970 World Cup. Since then, collecting and trading stickers and cards has become part of the World Cup experience, especially for the younger generation. In 2017, a 1970 World Cup Panini sticker album signed by Pelé sold for a record £10,450.

Up until 2015, Panini produced stickers and trading cards for the UEFA Champions League. As of 2019, Panini has license rights of football international competitions such as the FIFA World Cup, UEFA Nations League and Copa América, as well as domestic leagues including the Premier League (from the 2019–20 season), Spanish La Liga, Italian Serie A, and Argentine Primera División among others.

Pokémon (an abbreviation for Pocket Monsters in Japan) is a Japanese media franchise managed by The Pokémon Company, a company founded by Nintendo, Game Freak, and Creatures. The franchise was created by Satoshi Tajiri in 1996, and is centered on fictional creatures called “Pokémon”. In Pokémon, humans, known as Pokémon Trainers, catch and train Pokémon to battle other Pokémon for sport. All media works within the franchise are set in the Pokémon universe. The English slogan for the franchise is “Gotta Catch ‘Em All!“. There are currently 901 Pokémon species.

The Topps Company, Inc. is an American company that manufactures chewing gum, candy, and collectibles. Based in New York City, Topps is best known as a leading producer of American football, baseball, basketball, ice hockey, soccer, and other sports and non-sports themed trading cards. They will no longer be licensed by MLB to produce baseball cards after the 2025 season.

It is currently the only baseball card manufacturer with a contract with Major League Baseball. Topps also produces cards under the brand names Allen & Ginter and Bowman.

Magic: The Gathering (colloquially known as Magic or MTG) is a tabletop and digital collectible card game created by Richard Garfield. Released in 1993 by Wizards of the Coast (now a subsidiary of Hasbro), Magic was the first trading card game and had approximately thirty-five million players as of December 2018, and over twenty billion Magic cards were produced in the period from 2008 to 2016, during which time it grew in popularity.