One Piece Card Silliness

Before we jump into today’s missive, on Sunday night Logan Paul sold his Pikachu Illustrator for $16.5M at Goldin, setting the record for the most expensive card ever sold (bought by Anthony Scaramucci’s son, of all people!).

Mike from the Mantel team has all of the details here, so we won’t go to deep on it in Mail Day, but I am very curious how the buyer valued the card vs. the tasteful gold and diamond necklace it comes in.

I would never tell people how to spend their money (even A.J. Scaramucci), but I don’t understand the One Piece US Voyage fervor. 

Let’s take the St. John’s giveaway as an example. Everyone who has a ticket gets a card and a poster on their way out. St. John’s had two games of giveaways so far —  against UConn and Xavier. MSG has a seating capacity for St. Johns games of 19,812. So there are almost 40,000 One Piece cards floating out there JUST FROM ST. JOHN’S GAMES – and then we get into the Rutgers games the weeks before. And the Illinois games coming up. And the two other schools. 

How are people still paying $200+ for these cards??

And acting like this outside MSG?

My prediction: prices will drop hard and the people offering to buy your card for $150 outside the venue will be down to $50. And then, hopefully, they just go away. The real slick move here is to buy a ticket to the game and just flip that. Cut out the card reselling headache! Stubhub flipping is surprisingly super-easy!

And let’s not shortsell the actual basketball being played at the games — things will hilariously come to a head later this week when Houston plays Arizona (who just lost to Texas Tech and were toppled off their AP No. 1 spot) at one of the final stops on the tour. The cheapest ticket is $441. 

Speaking of One Piece, I know I recommended hopping in on collecting as part of my 2026 predictions… and I also noted I really don’t know much about it. But guess what? After a deep dive to try and figure out the persistently high price of the Monkey D. Luffy card, I have learned several new things, including:

• the definition of the word “waifu”

• the realization that “waifu” isn’t as dirty as its inclusion in eBay listings may lead you to believe 

• determining if a card of a scantily-clad female character is custom or official is nearly impossible

• this story on the 15 Most Attractive One Piece Heroes needed a “let’s walk this back” editor’s note clarifying the various personality traits that could also make a cartoon character attractive

  • Pokemon is not totally innocent here. Or have we forgotten about Jynx??

• “for collection purposes only” is something a One Piece card seller needed to put in his description. For some reason

• the "delete from recently viewed” process on eBay is a simple and painless experience

I think it’s time to move on. I’ll leave a couple lines here for our own editor’s note. Just in case!

(Editor’s Note: The original list from J.R. Fickle was even longer and more questionable than what made it to the final version).

Topps Series 1 is out and I test-drove a few packs this past week. I like it a lot. It’s a fun design, it’s easy to flip through and read the names — it has some fun inserts and surprises. The list of their 75 iconic cards was pretty spot-on – although I agree with Darren Rovell that the ‘87 Bonds was more iconic than the ‘86 (but I do lean more this is “great” than his terse “good” overall).

And since everyone likes to nitpick, I will say this: Yogi Berra should’ve been in there. But then I look back at my favorite Yogi Berra cards and they’re all Bowman, so… I can’t really complain. Still, he had such a “look” – the committee couldn’t have snuck in his 1985 manager card? It even looks great in a creepy off-centered listing from 20 feet away on a tiny stand made from a Manny Ramirez card!

The point here, however, is that Topps Series 1 is fun. Here’s to the (I assume) imminent release of 2026 Celebration!

OLYMPICS UPDATE: Fortunately for the Fickle household, our investment in figure skater cards pretty much stayed on the women’s side, with Amber Glenn and Alysa Liu. The closest we got to Ilia Malinin was a group autographed Stars on Ice photo — which we bought to have Liu and Glenn signatures on the same photo; he was just a bonus. Malinin’s crash and burn last week (which Steve Buckley wrote about wonderfully here), though, didn’t really affect his card prices. Yes, it looks like recent sales are lower overall, but a Topps base auto on Feb. 3 sold for $69.99 and it was $79.99 on Feb. 7… and $68 on Feb. 14 (while another sold for $80). 

The lesson? I don’t know if there is one. Just go collect for fun! Quad God meltdowns be damned!

Every once in a while I check Wander Franco card prices… just to see. And this time I stumbled upon possibly the greatest eBay listing of our lifetime :

Apparently we missed the Belma Cookie phenomenon while putting together our Hobby Awards nominees for Creator of the Year… and by “we,” I of course mean our CEO Evan, who didn’t even tell us there were Hobby Awards until we read it in a Thursday newsletter and he had to admit they existed. 

Anyway, here’s the video that started it all:

@belmacookie

Using WANDER FRANCO To Fund A Hobby Box #sportscards #packopening #productreview #boxopening #sports

And this is my new favorite cards-related account. Why didn’t anyone tell us about Belma Cookie before?? Should we buy a card? Even though he’s telling me not to?? STAY TUNED.