One Piece OP-16: The Admirals Reign Supreme Early
We called OP-16's chase back in May: the three admirals, Sakazuki on top. A week in, the market agrees on the ranking, but the price is still a thin, scattered guess that will stay volatile for weeks.
By Chase Society Desk
Saturdays we step outside Pokemon. Today it's One Piece, because a call we made a couple weeks ago just got its first real test.
One note before we start: no spoilers. This is about the TCG market and we haven't even finished the One Piece series either.
The call we made
Back on May 23, before OP-16 "The Time of Battle" launched anywhere, we made two arguments. First, that Bandai had done something unusual with its three top-rarity Manga Rares: it gave them to the three Marine Admirals, Sakazuki, Kuzan, and Borsalino, rather than the protagonists most buyers were set on. That left the real chase cards underpriced going in.
Second, the riskier bet, if one card was going to set the ceiling, we figured it was going to be Sakazuki.
Japan released on May 30. A week of trading in, things sorted out pretty close to what we said.
Where the admirals are trading
The honest starting point: it's very early, and there isn't a settled price on these cards yet. They're about a week old in Japan and not even out in English, so read the numbers below as a snapshot of a thin, fast market, not a fair value.
What is holding up is the ranking. Wherever these trade, Sakazuki is on top, which was exactly our call.
On SNKRDUNK, one of Japan's larger card marketplaces and a reasonable read on the JP market, the three admirals are listed from roughly:
- Sakazuki, around $2,000
- Kuzan, around $1,750
- Borsalino, around $1,575
English is presale until June 12, but the lowest English Sakazuki listings there have sat close to $2,200, right in line with Japan. So the two markets that actually have listings agree on the shape of it: this is a low four-figure trio today, Sakazuki fetching the highest price.
Then comes the reminder of how unsettled it is. Those are the lowest asks. Other price feeds we pull have the same Sakazuki listed north of $5,000. One card, days old, quoted anywhere from $2,000 to over $5,000 depending where you look.
Barely anything has sold, so the asks have nothing to anchor to. Japanese trading is spread across SNKRDUNK, Mercari, Yahoo Auctions, and physical card shops with dubious tracking, which is part of why the early reads scatter this far.
The steadier end of the board
To be clear, the whole set is presale, so none of these prices are settled. But the protagonist alt arts are the steadier read, because they have enough listings and presale orders behind them to show a number that isn't swinging by thousands:
- Blackbeard alt art, around $295
- Ace, Hancock, Yamato, and Luffy alt arts, $180 to $195
The admiral Manga Rares have a handful of scattered asks; these alt arts have a crowd of listings, which is why their numbers hold steadier. What that tells you is which faces the English audience pays up for, with the Admiral chase still thin and all over the place.
If you collect Pokemon, none of this is new. A brand-new special illustration chase prices the same way: a wild week-one range, then a settle, then often a long bleed once the launch crowd leaves. Week-one asks are the least reliable number a set ever produces.
Our take
Split it into what we're confident about and what we're not.
Confident: the admirals are the chase, Sakazuki leads, and boxes are scarce enough that pulling one isn't a solid plan. That's the structure we called, and a week of trading on both sides of the ocean backs it.
Also: these cards are sick. We expect this to be a very strong OP set and continue One Piece's streak of hype releases and incredible art.
Not confident: the exact prices. There's no settled number on these cards. The same Sakazuki is quoted anywhere from $2,000 to over $5,000 right now.
It stays volatile for weeks from here, and the English launch on June 12 is when real sales finally start replacing guesses. Anyone handing you a firm value on a card this new is straight up guessing.
So we're not putting money near it yet. The call was about which cards matter, and that part held. We'll revisit this set in a couple weeks after the English release and give an update on how things shook out.