One Piece night came and went before the All-Star Break. Ironically enough, it was the last game I paid serious attention to before the first-half finale in San Francisco. Sometimes it pays to miss bad baseball...
From all accounts, the promotional night was a success, even if not everyone was aware of what was happening.
Actress Emily Rudd, who plays Nami on the live-action Netflix adaptation of the show, threw out the first pitch. While I was
originally ambivalent about the promotional straw hat, it was surreal to watch the attending fans getting into the spirit of things and wearing the hat on the telecast.
The bumper that was created and used during the game was top-notch.
For the record, Luffy’s 56 is a Japanese pun for “go” (five) and “roku” (six) read as gommu, which relates to the main character, Luffy, who ate the Gomu Gomu no Mi (Gum Gum Fruit).
On the telecast, it was announced that the game was a sell-out, so it seems likely that the Straw Hat Pirates will return in 2026. The night’s festivities concluded with a drone show.
Back in May, I was skeptical about how the drone show would go.
This drone show better be spectacular is all I’m saying.
This One Piece drone show was insane. @OnePieceAnime x @ToeiAnimation pic.twitter.com/WxUPPWcW4t
— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) July 5, 2025
Expectations exceeded, everyone — well done. Naturally, someone uploaded the entire nearly ten-minute show to YouTube, which I shall link to here for the curious.
So why an aftermath essay and a public service announcement, no less? It has to do with the promotional items from that night.
The Current Collectible Trading Card Bubble
The first 40,000 fans received a promotional straw hat and a trading card from the One Piece collectible card game.
In person look at the co-branded Straw Hat and promo Monkey D. Luffy for the One Piece x @Dodgers collaboration night.#OnePiece#OnePieceCardGame pic.twitter.com/4k3fz5zstB
— One Piece Merch News (@OPMerchandise) July 4, 2025
To the unaware, the card, featuring art from the manga’s creator, Eiichiro Oda, looks like a simple trading card. However, over the past couple of years, games like the One Piece card game and the Pokémon Trading Card Game have developed subcultures centered on collecting rare cards from randomized packs.
These packs, which were originally sold for less than $10 per pack, now sell for significantly more (think anywhere from $25 to $500 or higher per pack). This explanation is generalized for brevity. It is not hyperbole to point out that some of these cards are valued and sold in excess of $1,000 per card.
Yes, collectible card hunting is very much like gambling because, generally, these extremely expensive cards are not the norm. Watching hunters spend an inordinate amount of money and get bupkis is an entertaining way to spend a couple of minutes engaging in schadenfreude.
One can likely gather where this article is going, considering the Dodgers just gave away a limited promotional item with art from the manga’s creator in an environment where subjective values are going haywire.
While I cannot quite share the levels of umbrage in this video, I can understand and relate to how annoyed I would be if I centered a trip to the ballpark around a promotional item and the greed of others kept me from what I was after.
To their credit, from accounts I have seen online, Dodger Stadium personnel did the best they could reasonably do under the circumstances. But at the end of the day, this promotion is not a Shohei Ohtani bobblehead, and with the stadium’s capacity, about 15% of patrons were likely going to be out of luck.
One can buy just about anything from a stadium giveaway on eBay, and normally, bobbleheads involving Ohtani fetch the highest prices. As an aside, Ohtani was gifted this Luffy/Dodgers figurine before the game.
I try not to live a life filled with envy, but sometimes Ohtani makes it very difficult. As the kids say, he just aura farms effortlessly (he’s just cool).
Still, after checking online, seeing that secondary sellers are selling the Luffy promo card for an average of $350-$ 500 is shocking. While prices have dipped from the initial frenzy, I would not expect prices to approach something reasonable until the market crashes.
The thing about speculation bubbles is that they persist until the party ends in a hurry. One need only go back to the 2008 financial crisis. Still, for a less dramatic implosion, we need only revisit the comic speculation bubble that popped in 1996, leading to the bankruptcy of Marvel Comics.
If you still have a promo card from One Piece Night in pristine condition, you could sell it on eBay for a tidy profit. That said, it seems unlikely that this card will be reprinted, so those who went to that game likely have a rare memento that will never be seen again.
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