The Story Begins
Every One Piece collection starts here. Bandai launched the One Piece Card Game in Japan in July 2022 to mark the manga's 25th anniversary, and the English version arrived on December 2, 2022, at $4.19 a pack. The first booster took its name from the very first chapter of Eiichiro Oda's manga, "Romance Dawn," which is also the title of the one-shot stories Oda drew before One Piece began. Nearly four years and sixteen more main sets later, it's still the set people mean when they talk about where the game began: the first booster set, the first parallels, and the first card built from Oda's own manga panels. If any rarity term below is new to you, our One Piece rarity guide walks through every tier.
Field | Details |
|---|---|
Release Date | December 2, 2022 (English); July 2022 (Japan) |
Block | Block 1 (the Block Icon printed on every card in the set) |
Set Code | OP-01 |
Set Size | 121 card types: 8 Leaders, 45 Commons, 30 Uncommons, 26 Rares, 10 Super Rares, 2 Secret Rares (Bandai's count, which leaves out parallel versions) |
Set Type | Main booster set |
Franchise Tie-In | The Straw Hats and the Supernovas, Wano Country, the Animal Kingdom Pirates, and the Warlords of the Sea |
Pack Contents | 12 cards per pack, 24 packs per box (per launch coverage at Dot Esports); $4.19 MSRP per pack (Bandai) |
Format Legality | Extra Regulation (all cards except banned ones); in Standard, only four OP-01 card numbers remain legal (see Special Notes) |
Standard Rotation Date | Rotated out of Standard April 1, 2026, with the rest of Block 1 |
Collector Interest Grade | B+ (79.85/100), see breakdown below |
What Makes It Special
Romance Dawn is the game's founding document. Every rung of Bandai's rarity ladder starts here, from Common to Secret Rare, and so does the second system layered on top of it: parallel versions of existing cards with new art and foil. It's also the home of the most famous card in One Piece, the manga-art Shanks, the first card to put Oda's actual comic panels on a card. Everything collectors chase today traces back to that one design.
The cast is the other half of it. Bandai built the set around three groups readers already knew: the Supernovas (Luffy, Zoro, Law, and Eustass Kid), the Wano story (Kouzuki Oden, Yamato, Kaido, and his lieutenant King), and the Warlords (Doflamingo, Crocodile, Boa Hancock, and Mihawk). For a game launching into an audience of manga readers, that was a list of headliners rather than a slow build.
New to This Set
Since this is the first set, "new" means the whole game. Here's what every One Piece player learned from Romance Dawn, in plain terms.
Leader. Your commander, and the card your deck is built around. It starts face up on the table, sets your deck's colors, and has a Life value: Roronoa Zoro (OP01-001) has 5, Trafalgar Law and Luffy have 4.
Life. At the start of the game you place that many cards from your deck face down as your Life. Each time your Leader takes a hit, one of those cards goes to your hand. Run out and take one more hit, and you lose.
DON!! cards. The game's resource, kept in a separate 10-card deck. You gain more each turn, rest them to pay costs, or attach them to your Leader and Characters for +1000 power each. Some effects only switch on with DON!! attached, which the card shows as "[DON!! x1]" or "[DON!! x2]."
Counter. The number printed on the side of many Characters. When you're attacked, you can discard a card from your hand to add its Counter value to your defender's power for that battle.
Keywords that started here: Rush (can attack the turn it's played), Blocker (can step in front of an attack), Double Attack (deals 2 damage), and Banish (a card it damages is trashed without triggering). The Secret Rare Yamato (OP01-121) carries the last two at once.
Top Chase Cards
Shanks (OP01-120) Manga Parallel — the card that defines One Piece collecting. It's the same card number as the gold-frame Secret Rare, reprinted in black-and-white panels lifted from Oda's manga, and it was the first manga card in the game. TCGplayer market sat near $4,000 on October 30, 2026.
Monkey.D.Luffy (OP01-003) Leader Parallel — the alternate-art version of the red/green Luffy Leader, whose ability sets one of your Supernovas or Straw Hat Characters back to active. Market price near $1,010 on October 30, 2026.
Roronoa Zoro (OP01-001) Leader Parallel — card number 001 of the whole game. The base Leader gives every one of your Characters +1000 power on your turn with one DON!! attached, about as simple as a Leader gets. Market price near $640 on October 30, 2026.
Notable Secondary Pulls
Trafalgar Law (OP01-002) Leader Parallel — the third Supernova Leader in alternate art, a red/green Leader that, once you have five Characters out, can swap one for a different-color Character from your hand. Around $460.
Nami (OP01-016) Parallel — a Rare in the corner, and the clearest proof in the game that the rarity letter isn't the story. The one-cost Nami digs five cards deep for another Straw Hat, and her parallel is one of OP-01's best-known pulls. Around $455.
Roronoa Zoro (OP01-025) Super Rare Parallel — three cost, 5000 power, and Rush, so he can attack the turn he lands. Around $230.
Monkey.D.Luffy (OP01-024) Super Rare Parallel — a two-cost Luffy that can't be K.O.'d in battle by Strike attackers once he has two DON!! attached. Around $220.
All prices are TCGplayer market as of October 30, 2026. Prices link live to TCGplayer and update independently of this article. Cards reprinted in the Premium Booster PRB-01 keep their original numbers and are listed separately, so check the set name on any listing.
Pull Rates
Bandai has never published pull rates for any One Piece set, so everything here comes from community box openings. The most detailed per-set estimates we found come from Japanese-print openings collected by Samurai Sword Tokyo; English packs may differ, and none of these sources shows its full data. Treat them as ranges, not rates.
Rarity | Types in set | Community estimate |
|---|---|---|
Super Rare | 10 | 3 to 4 per box |
Super Rare parallel | 10 | 1 to 2 per box |
Leader parallel | 8 | About 1 per 2 to 3 boxes |
Secret Rare | 2 | About 1 per 4 to 6 boxes |
Secret Rare parallel | 2 | About 1 per 8 to 12 boxes |
Manga parallel (Shanks) | 1 | Rarer than 1 per 12-box case; sources disagree |
For how these tiers relate to each other, and why the trackers disagree, see our One Piece rarity guide.
How It Compares
Romance Dawn set the skeleton nearly every later main set kept: 45 Commons, 26 Rares, 10 Super Rares, and 2 Secret Rares, all of them still the counts Bandai printed for years afterward. What came later is mostly what Romance Dawn didn't have. Special Cards first appeared in OP-03, Treasure Rares in OP-06, and from OP-04 onward Bandai cut Leaders from 8 per set to 6 and added a star above the rarity code on parallels, so Romance Dawn's parallels are identified by their art alone. Later sets also carry more manga cards: Romance Dawn has one, while OP-17 has four. That single manga card is a big part of why this set's top end is so concentrated in one name.
Collector Interest Grade Breakdown
Factor | Weight | Score |
|---|---|---|
Community Reception | 30% | 88 |
Chase Card Desirability | 25% | 90 |
Competitive Relevance / Playability | 20% | 45 |
Artistic / Design Merit | 15% | 85 |
Franchise / Nostalgia Pull | 10% | 92 |
Total / Grade | 79.85 — B+ |
Reception and chase carry this one. The English launch got hot fast, with players and collectors arriving together, and the set's place as the starting point gives it a pull later releases can't borrow. The chase list is as deep at the top as any set in the game: a manga card near $4,000 and two Leader parallels above $600 as of October 30. Franchise scores near the ceiling for a lineup of Luffy, Zoro, Law, Shanks, and the Warlords. Art is strong but uneven; the parallels and the manga Shanks are standouts, while the base cards are plainer than the game's later work. Competitive Relevance is the low score, and that's rotation, not quality: since April 1, 2026, Romance Dawn lives in Extra Regulation, with only four of its card numbers still legal in Standard.
Special Notes
Standard rotation. Bandai's Block Number System took effect on April 1, 2026, and Standard now allows only Block 2 and later. Romance Dawn is Block 1, so it plays in Extra Regulation, Bandai's format where every card is legal except banned ones. Four OP-01 card numbers stay Standard-legal per Bandai's block update list: Nami (OP01-016) and Shanks (OP01-120), which Bandai lists among Super Parallel card numbers that stay legal, and Killer (OP01-039) and You Can Be My Samurai!! (OP01-055), which Bandai treats as Block 4 through March 31, 2029. Bandai's card database also marks several OP-01 cards as errata cards, including the Luffy Leader (OP01-003), Nami (OP01-016), and Trafalgar Law (OP01-047), so check the current text before you play them.
English booster boxes came in two print waves, which retailer listings identify by the box bottom: blue for the first wave and white for the reprint. TCGplayer lists them as separate products.
Fun Facts / Trivia
"Romance Dawn" is the title of One Piece's first manga chapter and of the one-shot stories Oda drew before the series began, so the game opened with the same words the manga did.
Yamato (OP01-121) is also treated as Kouzuki Oden under the rules, a nod to how Yamato calls himself Oden in the story.
The two Secret Rares, Shanks and Yamato, are numbered 120 and 121, past the set's 119 regular cards. Main sets have numbered their Secret Rares the same way ever since.
Scoring Methodology: The Collector Interest Grade for set overviews is calculated from five weighted factors — Community Reception (30%), Chase Card Desirability (25%), Competitive Relevance/Playability (20%), Artistic/Design Merit (15%), and Franchise/Nostalgia Pull (10%) — scored 0–100 based on documented facts and sourced critical/community reception, mapped to a letter grade. This grade reflects hobby and collecting interest only.
Pricing: Prices are TCGplayer market snapshots dated October 30, 2026; links update independently of this article.
Affiliate Disclosure: Tome Collective may be compensated if you make a purchase through links in this article.
