The first OP-17 weekend of real competition came and went. Nothing caught a bid.
OP-17 hit shelves on 28 August and the first big North American events ran the next day. Of the 160 OP-17 singles we track, 155 fell over that window, a median of 59.4 percent. Sealed, which had been the one exception, rolled over too.
The English street date for OP-17 was Friday 28 August. The first major North American events of the format, a Treasure Cup and an Offline Regional at Osceola Heritage Park in Kissimmee, ran the next day. Decklists were locked roughly a day after the first retail packs were opened.
That gap is worth paying attention to, because it separates two things that normally happen together. In a usual release, supply arrives and the meta sorts itself out over the same few weeks, so when a card moves you cannot tell whether tournament results proved it or whether boxes simply ran dry. Here supply landed on day zero and the first competitive read landed on day one.
We do not carry decklists. What we carry is the price tape, so that is what we looked at.
155 of 160
We track 160 OP-17 singles that had a price on both 27 August, the day before street date, and 31 August, two days after Kissimmee. Over that window 155 of them fell. Three rose. Two finished flat. The median move was minus 59.4 percent and the average was minus 53.1 percent.
That is not a set finding its level around a few winners. That is a whole set going one way at once.
All six leaders down, but not evenly
Every one of the six OP-17 leader alternate arts is lower than it was on the 27th. The spread between the best and the worst is 21 points, and that spread is the only real information in the group.
Charlotte Linlin OP17-099 held up best, at $34.61 USD (A$48.31) on 31 August against $60.11 (A$83.91) four days earlier, down 42.4 percent. 114 recorded sales in 30 days, liquidity A, stamped SELL WATCH.
Monkey.D.Luffy OP17-079 is next at $70.72 USD (A$98.72), down 50.3 percent from $142.24 (A$198.55). It is also the busiest of the group, with 346 sales in 30 days.
Behind them: Rocks.D.Xebec OP17-039 down 54.7 percent to $60.41 (A$84.33), Kaido OP17-058 down 56.5 percent to $51.88 (A$72.42), Shanks OP17-020 down 60.3 percent to $30.13 (A$42.06), and Edward.Newgate OP17-001 down 63.4 percent to $26.33 (A$36.75). All six carry a SELL WATCH stamp.
If a leader had broken out at Kissimmee, we would expect its price to separate from the pack within a couple of days. None did. The ordering above looks a lot more like where each card started than like anything that happened at a tournament.
The part that is new: sealed rolled over too
Through pre-release week, sealed was the exception. Boxes climbed while singles bled, and the tidy explanation was the one box per person lottery the official shops ran over release weekend.
That has stopped.
The World's Strongest Warriors Booster Box printed $393.10 USD (A$548.73) on 27 August and $340.40 (A$475.17) on the 31st, down 13.4 percent, now stamped SELL WATCH. The 12 box case is down 10.3 percent to $3,924.12 (A$5,477.74). Double Pack Set Vol. 12 Display is down 17.8 percent to $369.54 (A$515.85). The loose booster pack is down 20.2 percent to $9.97 (A$13.92).
Sealed held up until product was actually in the room, then it did what the singles did. Four days is a short window and we are not calling it a trend yet, but the direction is unambiguous and it is a change from the week before.
The honest caveat
We cannot fully separate the two effects here. The Kissimmee results and the post street date supply wave landed inside the same 96 hours, and supply alone pushes prices down. A clean version of this test needs a weekend where a set is already in wide supply and only the tournament is new.
What we can say is narrower and still useful: nothing caught a bid. Across the whole board, SELL WATCH went from 691 stamps on street date to 870 on the 31st. BUY SETUP, the rarest stamp we issue, printed 1, 2, 2, 2 and 3 across the same six days. The board did not find a single new thing worth buying out of the first competitive weekend of the format.
What we are watching
Utrecht on 5 and 6 September brings the European Championship Finals plus a Treasure Cup, with Brisbane the same weekend. Dallas follows on 18 and 19 September for the North American Finals. Bigger fields, and by then a set with three more weeks of supply behind it, which makes both a cleaner read than Kissimmee was.
The specific thing we will check is whether any one of the six leaders stops moving with the other five. Right now they are all telling the same story, and the same story from six different leaders usually means the market is reacting to the calendar rather than to the cards.
Prices in AUD converted at the 31 August rate.