One Piece College Basketball Cards Are Worth Even More Now

This is the flip that keeps on flipping

One Piece College Basketball Promo Reseller

News

By RC Staff

23 May 2026

Key Points

Graded PSA 10 copies of the One Piece College Basketball Luffy card are selling for $600 to $800 on eBay
Ungraded cards and PSA 9s are holding at around $300, well above where most collectors expected them to land
Resellers that worked efficiently and bought multiple cards are looking at tens of thousands in profit

Remember when a lot of people thought these cards would crash to $10 once the giveaway wrapped up? Yeah, about that.

A few months ago, the One Piece College Basketball promotion was the biggest story in reselling. Cards were being bought and sold right outside of arenas while security was threatening to eject anyone who looked like they were running an operation. A college basketball arena in New Jersey was actually burgled for what might have been millions of dollars worth of cards. And one pair of resellers spent over $8,000 at the Gonzaga game to walk out with nearly 300 cards. Now, a few months later, those who held on and sent their cards to PSA are sitting on something that looks a lot like a windfall.

One Piece College Basketball Promo Explained

The One Piece College Basketball US Voyage ran from January 23 through March 4 across five schools: Gonzaga, Rutgers, St. John’s, Illinois, and Houston.

Every ticketed fan at any of the 15 participating home games received a free Monkey D. Luffy promo card. We covered the opportunity when it launched, the story of an RC Elite member securing 293 cards at a single Gonzaga game, and the Jersey Mike’s Arena burglary in which thieves broke into a locked office and stole an unconfirmed number of cards (and were never arrested).

We were pretty damn excited about this promotion, as it was hitting just as One Piece TCG hype was hitting its stride. It seemed like a perfect confluence of rarity and desirability, and an opportunity for dedicated resellers to load up on a valuable product.

Based on attendance estimates, at least 100,000 cards were printed and distributed. One canceled St. John’s game left roughly 20,000 cards undistributed, and the Rutgers theft removed an unknown quantity from circulation. With that much supply floating around at $400 to $500 a card, a lot of collectors called it: this market was going to crater.

It did not.

Luffy College Basketball Cards Keep Selling

We went back and checked eBay recently, and the market looks almost nothing like what the bears were predicting. Things have largely migrated toward graded copies, and the prices are striking.

PSA 10 copies are regularly selling for $600, $700, and in some cases $800. PSA 9s and raw ungraded cards are settling around $300, which is a far cry from the $50 to $100 range that many assumed was the floor. Highly graded Beckett cards (generally regarded as stricter and rarer than PSA 10s) have traded hands for over $1,000.

The precedent here was hiding in plain sight. We covered the One Piece x LA Dodgers card giveaway last summer, which produced an estimated 30,000 copies. That card was trading around $375 shortly after the game. Within a few months, raw copies were clearing nearly $1,500, with a Beckett Pristine 10 Black Label selling for $15,000 in November. The One Piece TCG collector base has money, and they treat sport-crossover promos as genuine trophies.

The college basketball cards had a far larger print run than the Dodgers card, so a 1:1 price comparison isn’t realistic. But the graded ceiling on PSA 10s landing at $600 to $800 is a strong result for a card that cost nothing to obtain, and it validates the thesis we were pushing back in January: high nominal supply doesn’t kill demand when you have a collector community this big and this dedicated.

What Collectors Should Do

If you attended any of the 15 games this past winter and still have your card sitting in a binder somewhere, this is your call to action. Submitting to PSA is absolutely worth the time and money at current prices.

A PSA 10 result pays for itself many times over. Even a PSA 9 at $300 is a meaningful return on a card you got for free. If you didn’t know these cards were worth anything, now you do.

Take Jake Proost’s previously-mentioned 293-card haul as an example: at current prices, even a conservative grading yield pushes his total return well past $100,000 on an $8,120 buy-in + $6,000 or so in grading fees. The thief or thieves responsible for the Rutgers heist could potentially be sitting on $4,000,000 worth of product if they boosted all 8,000 cards intended for the giveaway, although reports indicate they made off with far fewer.

Bottom Line

The One Piece College Basketball promotion was the first big reselling story of 2026, and it has held up better than almost anyone expected. It’s a reminder to take print run FUD with a few grains of salt when collector demand is real, and that grading is not optional when the ceiling on a card is this high.

It’s also a validation of the approach we took here at RC. We called this opportunity early, covered it aggressively, and encouraged readers to put real effort into securing cards while they could. The resellers who listened are now sitting on some serious profits.

If you’re not yet part of RC Elite, this is exactly the kind of opportunity that gets posted there first. The waitlist is open.