Hyper Battle Luffy is the 1999 One Piece card to buy after PSA's Zoro record

PSA bragged on Nov. 1 about a $3,130 Hyper Battle Zoro, an all-time high for a card that sold for $46 in August 2025. It sold in PSA's own eBay store, in a PSA slab, about as in-house as a record gets. That Zoro comes from 2000's 4th Stage. The First Stage Zoro C06, a year older, sold for $4,250 in a PSA 10 the weekend PSA posted.

Hyper Battle cards are Carddass, the cards Bandai has sold out of vending machines in Japan since 1988. First Stage came out in 1999, the year the One Piece anime premiered in Japan on Oct. 20, 23 years before Romance Dawn started the card game most collectors play now. Luffy is card C01, the first card in the first set, while Zoro gets three cards of his own a few numbers later.

You don't need five figures to own a piece of early Hyper Battle. A First Stage Nami C09 sold for $470 in a PSA 9 on Oct. 26, while a 2001 Grand Line Compilation Nami went for $88 in the same grade two days later.

First Stage's Luffy C01 is the card I'd want. A PSA 9 sold for $18,401 on Oct. 6, while a raw copy brought $1,680 in late September. Collectors pay that premium for a 27-year-old card that came out of a vending machine and survived almost three decades in great condition.

It's a thin market, where a PSA 9 changes hands about twice a month and none has sold since Oct. 6.

But PSA just pointed One Piece collectors at Hyper Battle while the first Luffy sits well under its August price. I'd bid $17,000 on a PSA 9, a little under the October sale, then wait for one of the few sellers to take it.