Six Leaders, One Release Day: Early Pricing on the ST-31 to ST-36 Starter Wave
Bandai ships six starter decks on the same day for the first time in the game's history, and pre-release pricing already shows a clear split. We stacked all six against the last decade of starters we track to see where early demand is landing before a single deck hits shelves.
Tomorrow, July 31, Bandai ships six starter decks on the same day: ST-31 RED Monkey.D.Luffy, ST-32 GREEN Roronoa Zoro, ST-33 BLUE Kuzan, ST-34 PURPLE Charlotte Katakuri, ST-35 RED/BLACK Sabo, and ST-36 YELLOW Eustass "Captain" Kid. Six new leaders, six new toolboxes, one shelf date. It's being billed as the largest single-day starter deck wave in the game's history, and for collectors used to staggered drops that let the market breathe between releases, this is a different kind of week.
We pulled pre-release pricing on all six sealed decks and stacked them against the last decade of Bandai starters we track, ST-22 through ST-30, to get a read on where secondary market demand already sits before a single pack has been opened at retail.
The early spread is wide. [[card:4e744b79-7227-4025-8c78-c8a38cd2ea03]] (ST-31 Luffy) is trading around $71.03 AUD and [[card:0557488b-ab72-457a-afc0-77290f144255]] (ST-32 Zoro) sits close behind at $70.42 AUD. That's not just the top of this wave, it's already higher than the current sealed price of every prior starter deck in our tracking set, including ST-23 RED Shanks at $65.51 AUD and ST-26 PURPLE/BLACK Luffy at $56.71 AUD, decks that have had over a year to find their level. RED and GREEN carrying Luffy and Zoro into a fresh format is doing real work here.
The other four are still commanding solid prices, just not at that ceiling. [[card:fc7846e7-fffd-4be6-940f-4a071b3d08a6]] (ST-35 Sabo) is at $61.58 AUD, [[card:3eb50a67-85b1-474e-a828-5075cea03163]] (ST-33 Kuzan) at $60.03 AUD, and [[card:0d0ea9ac-7c1c-49dc-bb84-3dd922201127]] (ST-36 Kid) and [[card:513a90ed-f567-4970-9ed9-aa6096440c8d]] (ST-34 Katakuri) round out the pack at $55.58 and $55.15 AUD respectively. For context, that's already in line with or above where ST-29 Egghead ($57.24 AUD) and ST-30 Luffy & Ace ($56.63 AUD) sit today, and those decks have had months on the secondary market to settle.
One thing worth flagging before anyone reads too much into the ranking: all six decks show slightly negative 7-day momentum right now, with ST-33 Kuzan the softest at down almost 7% and ST-31 Luffy the steadiest at under 1%. That's a normal pre-release pattern. Early listings tend to run hot on speculation and cool as the street date approaches and supply firms up, so we would expect these numbers to shift once real sales data starts flowing in after tomorrow.
Display box pricing across all six decks is currently identical at $183.67 AUD, which reads like list pricing rather than a settled market signal. We will have real box-level data once displays actually start changing hands.
What we're watching: whether Luffy and Zoro hold their lead once the full lineup is on shelves and collectors can compare card-for-card, not just leader hype. We are also watching Kuzan's softer pre-release momentum, since BLUE has not had a marquee leader in a while, and this could be the early tell on whether Kuzan sticks as a build-around or fades once the novelty wears off. Check back after the weekend for the first real post-release sales data across all six.