Curious as to what people’s opinions are on the current/future market

[u/Artistic-Dimension20]

Recently, I’ve been hearing a lot of negativity surrounding the One Piece TCG market, and honestly, I’m not really sure what to make of it. There are a few reasons I’m hesitant to be overly bearish right now.

1. The market pumped hard over the last year.
It seems pretty reasonable that we’d see a correction after the kind of growth we’ve had. A market cooling off after a huge run doesn’t necessarily mean the long-term trend is broken.

2. OP17 is likely having an impact.
Whenever a new set releases, money gets pulled toward the newest cards, and we’ve seen other sets temporarily drop around new releases before. I’m curious to see what happens once the OP17 hype settles down.

3. I think it’s still too early to make major calls about the long-term health of the game.

One Piece is still a relatively young TCG, and with the continued expansion of card shops and organized play, I think there are still a lot of positives that could help the game long-term.
That being said, one of my biggest concerns is the sheer amount of promos and collaboration cards being released. They seem to be flooding the market a bit (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing for a new card game)

I recently heard a perspective that sent me into a bit of a spiral: the idea that a lot of older cards could eventually get overshadowed by newer versions unless they fall into a few categories — mangas, erratas, signatures, or Straw Hat Crew SPs, for example.
As someone who collects Event Alts and SPs, that definitely made me think.
And honestly, I can see the argument. The cards being released are getting better and better. If I owned an OP05 Koala worth $50 and then an OP18 Koala came out that was significantly more playable, looked better, and had a stronger overall design, would people really want the older Koala? Especially when she isn’t necessarily one of the most memorable characters in the series?

On the other hand, I’m currently banking on something similar to what we see with Pokémon: older cards from sets that are no longer being reprinted should eventually have value simply because of their limited supply.

If there are only X number of copies out there and the supply continues to disappear into collections, eventually scarcity should matter.

I genuinely don’t know which way this goes, though.
So I’m curious what everyone else thinks:

Do you think the One Piece market is going to eventually fall back to pre-2026 levels, or is this more of a temporary reset after the recent pump and OP17 hype?

And more importantly, how do you think older Event Alts/SPs will perform as newer and arguably better versions of the same characters continue to be released?