The standard method is to place the card in a soft sleeve and then slide it into a rigid top-loader for extra protection
Meanwhile, on the main product line, Wizards was slowly increasing the drop rate on foil cards in booster packs
Konami issued an Advanced format which is used in tournaments and is a list of cards that are forbidden or limited to a certain number of copies of a certain card per deck, (To see the current March 2010 list of forbidden cards, check out www.yugioh-card.com, the website covers all regions so its good for everyone!)
Its been stuck at $15 for most of the year (which it dropped to soon after a pair of buyouts on February 8 and March 14), but another wave of buyouts starting on August 24 made it spike again and surpass its previous all-time high of $33
Sphere Kuriboh, Kunai with Chain, and even Hidden Temples of Necrovalley are all considerations