An independent encyclopedia for collectible Yonex racquets.
No comprehensive Yonex catalog exists anywhere — not on Yonex's own site, not on any retailer, not on any fan forum. RareRacquets fills that gap. We track secondary market prices, document every model across four decades, and tell the stories behind the racquets that defined the sport.
Why this exists
Yonex makes the most collectible badminton racquets in the world. Lin Dan won his first Olympic gold with one, in Beijing in 2008. Lee Chong Wei held the world #1 ranking for 349 weeks with them. Viktor Axelsen won Olympic gold in Tokyo and again in Paris with the same model, the Astrox 100 ZZ.
And yet, until now, there has been nowhere to look up what any of this is worth, when a model was made, who used it, or what makes one variant rarer than another. Buyers overpay. Sellers undersell. Fakes circulate freely. The information collectors need has lived in scattered Reddit threads, Facebook group DMs, and the heads of a few specialist dealers.
The model for what we're building is BrickEconomy for LEGO: an independent price tracker that becomes the canonical reference because it tells the truth about the market — even when the truth is "we don't have enough data yet."
Who runs this
RareRacquets is operated by the team behind BadmintonDeal.com, a Hong Kong-based Yonex specialist retailer that ships internationally. We've been buying, selling, authenticating, and shipping Yonex equipment since long before this site existed.
We're disclosing that connection up front because the editorial neutrality of this site only works if you trust it, and trust is built on transparency, not omission. Here is exactly how the two brands relate:
RareRacquets is the catalog. BadmintonDeal is one retailer among several. When BadmintonDeal carries a racquet, it appears in the "Where to find it" panel after the open marketplaces — eBay, Mercari Japan and regional resale sites — never as the only option and never at the top. The racquets we feature, the rarity tiers we assign, and the prices we publish are decided independently of what BadmintonDeal happens to have in stock.
The strategic logic: we believe an editorially neutral catalog is more valuable to the badminton community — and ultimately a stronger long-term position for both brands — than a thinly disguised storefront. We'd rather be the reference everyone trusts than the marketing arm of one retailer.
Our editorial commitments
- · Every "Where to find it" panel lists the open marketplaces first. BadmintonDeal, where it appears, comes after them, and no seller's asking price is shown there.
- · Price history is tracked from verified completed sales, on eBay and on Asian resale markets, and never from any retailer's listing price.
- · Live retailer listings, when shown, are clearly labeled as "asking prices" and kept separate from sold-price history. We never mix the two.
- · We will not accept paid placement, sponsored articles, or affiliate-only listings. If a retailer appears here, it's because they have stock and a track record, not because they paid us.
- · When data is sparse, we say so. A racquet with two verified transactions gets a text note, not an extrapolated chart. Honest gaps are part of the product.
How prices are tracked
Our price data comes from three kinds of source — and only completed sales ever become a published value:
We require a minimum of three verified transactions before publishing a price chart. Below that threshold, you'll see a short text callout instead — because two data points and a line of best fit isn't a market, it's a guess. And where no verified sale exists at all, we say "No verified sales yet" rather than publish a number. The methodology page explains how sales are verified and how to read each label.
The catalog
366 racquets across 12 series, spanning the 48 years from the 1978 Carbonex 8 to today's Astrox 100 VA line. Every one has a written profile. 366 are full-length articles; the rest are shorter profiles with the specs Yonex documented and the context to place them in the timeline. The catalog isn't finished: dozens of known models are still to be added.
If we're missing a model, a colorway, or a player edition you know exists — please tell us. The catalog is alive.
Beta state
RareRacquets launched in beta in early 2026. It is, deliberately, an unfinished product — published while still being built because waiting for completeness would mean waiting forever, and a partial encyclopedia that exists is more valuable than a complete one that doesn't.
- · Complete 366-racquet catalog with filtering and search
- · Full editorial articles on the top grail models
- · Verified price history charts for high-traded models
- · Player equipment timelines
- · Newsletter signup
- · Submit-a-transaction form for community price data
- · Photographs for every racquet
- · Wider verified price coverage across the long tail
- · Live eBay listings on grail pages
- · Collection tracking ("I own this", "I want this")
- · Monthly Market Watch newsletter
Get in touch
RareRacquets gets better when collectors, players, and dealers contribute. We'd love to hear from you if you can:
- Report a transaction. A verified eBay sold price, a Mercari Japan purchase, a private sale you can document — every data point sharpens the picture.
- Flag a missing model. Player editions, regional colorways, and one-off limited runs — if it exists and we don't have it, we want to know.
- Submit a correction. Wrong year, wrong player, wrong spec, mis-attributed achievement — point it out and we'll fix it.
- Share a photograph. Especially of grail models we don't have shots of. Credit and a link back are guaranteed.
The fastest way to contribute a price data point is the dedicated form. For anything else, the newsletter signup below doubles as a contact line — leave a note in the email and it gets to us.