The thread

A post on r/ONEPIECETCG this weekend from a self-described casual player, someone who has only ever run starter decks, asked the community for help building a list around the new OP17 Shanks leader. Favourite character, first scratch build, no idea where to start. It is the most common on-ramp story in the game, and it is also a pricing story, because the entry point for that particular leader is not cheap.

Threads like this are a useful demand signal. They tend to cluster around a leader in the weeks after a set lands, and they precede the part where a few hundred new players go shopping for the same fifty-card shell.

What the leader actually costs

Shanks (020) (Alternate Art) is marking $299.99. That is the alt art treatment of the leader, and it is the number that gets quoted whenever someone posts a Shanks list, which is a decent chunk of why deckbuilding threads read as intimidating to newer players.

The character cards inside the same set are a different market. Shanks (022) sits at $29.99 as an SR, and Kaido (062) is at the same $29.99. Neither is a rounding error, but neither is in leader territory either.

Card Number Rarity Price
Shanks (020) (Alternate Art) OP17-020 L $299.99
Shanks (022) OP17-022 SR $29.99
Kaido (062) OP17-062 SR $29.99

OP17 is still the outlier on the EV board

The supply side is unusual right now. OP17 carries a box market price of $381.59 against a box EV of $1,120, an EV ratio of 2.93. Nothing else on the board is close. OP15 is next at 0.87, OP14 at 0.75, PRB02 at 0.70 and OP11 at 0.68. Every one of those is below 1.00, which is the normal shape of a mature sealed market.

A 2.93 reading on a fresh set usually means one of two things: the chase cards have not yet settled after early scarcity pricing, or the sealed product is underpriced relative to what is actually inside. Either way it is the kind of gap that closes rather than widens. Full board on the EV page.

Elsewhere this week

The promo market did most of the moving. Monkey.D.Luffy (091) (Offline Regional 2024 Vol. 3) [Finalist] added 32.3 percent to $961.59, and Trafalgar Law (Online Regional Finalist Card Set 2025 Vol.2) gained 32.5 percent to $300.

The Round 1 promo block went the other way, and went hard. Sanji (Round 1 Promo) fell 67.8 percent to $36.15, Monkey.D.Luffy (Round 1 Promo) dropped 59.6 percent to $206.09, and Roronoa Zoro (Round 1 Promo) shed 53.9 percent to $97.11. Four of the five worst performers this week share that print run.

The Terminal take

The gap between a $299.99 alt art leader and $29.99 SR support is the real content of that Reddit thread. Deck cost in this game is concentrated almost entirely in one slot, and OP17's 2.93 EV ratio says the market has not finished pricing the set's contents against its sealed product. Watch whether the ratio compresses from the top down or the bottom up.