Gonzaga fans keep tight-fisted grip on collectible ‘One Piece’ cards following college’s final giveaway

Gonzaga fans gave their best George W. Bush impression Tuesday night while leaving the Kennel.

“Fool me once, shame on, shame on you,” the former president once famously said. “Fool me – you can’t get fooled again.”

A collectors carnival once again descended upon the McCarthey Athletic Center Tuesday night, only this time, Gonzaga fans better understood the potential value of what they carried.

As fans departed the game after the Bulldogs thumped the Washington State Cougars, they were handed collectible cards from the manga franchise “One Piece” as part of a promotion. It was the third and final time Gonzaga fans were given the collectibles, which have spiked in value to hundreds of dollars online.

The postgame open-air market of scalpers hoping to buy the cards from fans returned for the final giveaway of the One Piece card, although with slightly less fervor that followed the Jan. 31 matchup with Saint Mary’s College. Many who sold their cards for less than $50 last game were now much more reluctant to part with the card. Offers of $100 were the starting rate Tuesday.

“A lot more people knew what was going on,” said Jayden Martinez, an 18-year-old collector from Moses Lake who made his second trip to Spokane solely to purchase cards.

After the Saint Mary’s game, Martinez, his cousin, and a few of their friends were caught up in the hubbub outside McCarthey . The longtime fans of the show were looking to get cards for their personal collections, and were ready to respectfully, and timidly, offer cash to fans leaving the arena.

The crew quickly got pushed aside by older, more aggressive scalpers, a group that also made another appearance Tuesday. Much to both parties’ dismay, however, most Gonzaga fans were taking the cards home. The cacophony of carnival barkers yelling “$100 a card” fell mostly on deaf ears.

“They’re definitely pausing more, not as quick to sell, if they are interested,” Martinez said. “A lot of people just cut to the front at that point trying to stop the older people.”

“One Piece College Basketball: US Voyage” is a promotional partnership between five American universities and the wildly popular Japanese manga franchise “One Piece.” The story of a stretchy, super powered sailor named Monkey D. Luffy and his quest to become the next King of the Pirates holds the title for the top-selling comic book of all time, while also boasting 1,100 episodes of an animated TV series, a live Netflix adaptation and a related card game.

The second season of the Netflix show is set to debut March 10, which is, in part, a driving factor for One Piece parent company Bandai Namco Entertainment to partner with sports marketing and media rights company Learfield, which contracts with more than 280 college athletics programs across the country, including Gonzaga.

Giveaways of co-branded T-shirts, posters and a limited edition card for the One Piece Card Game spanned all 15 games included in the partnership – three for each school.

The One Piece collectible giveaway has caused chaotic encounters across the country.

At Rutgers University, someone burglarized their basketball arena after hours and made off with an unknown number of cards. At the University of Houston, officials had to develop an exit plan for their attendees to get their cards and home in one piece. In Spokane, dispersal plans have changed each game, and the last two have attracted a crowd of collectors and scalpers unable to get a ticket inside the Kennel.

The scalpers and collectors Tuesday at Gonzaga had to implement more drastic measures than after the previous giveaways. Gonzaga facility crews placed barricades roughly 20 feet from the doors to the athletic center, in an attempt to avoid the mass pile-up that occurred last time. The barricades worked for around five minutes before those laying in wait pushed through to catch exiting fans before everyone else. Security inside the building repeatedly asked the scalpers to back up.

In another instance, a gentleman heard agreeing to pay an elderly woman $150 for her card quickly backtracked, trying to knock the price down.

“Oh look you bent it,” he said as he grabbed the card from her. “I can’t buy it like this. Best I can do is $40.”

The woman took the card back and looked at it incredulously. Another man who overheard the interaction stepped in, took a look at the card and quickly explained to the woman the scalper was trying to scam her. She thanked him, pocketed the card and walked away.

Gonzaga students Nate Bell and Maggie Ruddell stood behind the crowd toward the athletic center’s parking lot, taking in the spectacle before them.

“It makes a lot of sense to me,” Ruddell said.

“One Piece” is a zany series, she said, with a devoted fanbase as wound up as Luffy when he twists himself into a spiral. Gonzaga fans are just as crazy about hardwood theatrics, so the two crowds suit each other more than one thinks.

“It just adds to the vibrancy of the community,” Ruddell said.

The promotion also added to student pocketbooks, with tales of multi-thousand dollar paydays circulating around campus. Bell said he knows of a student who made $6,500 after scooping up as many cards as they could at the first giveaway game on Jan. 24. Ruddell said she made $350 off a handful of cards after the Saint Mary’s game, the second giveaway.

“I’m not really one for this type of collecting hype, but it’s been interesting to see the market for it,” Bell said. “All the worth is just from what other people value it.”

Vinny Paganelli, general manager of The Comic Book Shop’s Spokane Valley location, said the company has had a few prospective sellers visit, including one person who brought in more than 60 of the cards to the NorthTown Mall location, saying they had another 100 left at home.

“Some people ended up getting an absolute butt-ton,” Paganelli said. “That’s just too many. Getting more than 10 is ridiculous to me.”

The Comic Book Shop was in the market for some of the cards, but filled their sought quota of less than a dozen within an hour of advertising on social media a few weeks ago, Paganelli said.

Ruddell said she held on to a few cards to see how the market may change in the coming months and years. The cards initially fetched upwards of $1,000 when they first debuted, which fell to between $400 and $800 within a few weeks. Nowadays, with more cards in circulation, prices online have fallen as low as $1.

The market’s a bit flooded right now, Paganelli said.

“It’s going to be interesting,” Paganelli said of the card value. “It’ll probably take a dip for a minute, but it’ll go back up after a while.”

Gonzaga Athletics did not return a Wednesday inquiry into their reflections about the “One Piece” collaboration. Regardless, Pagenelli, Martinez and Ruddell, all longtime One Piece fans, raved about the experience, despite the headaches caused by the card craze.

“It’s neat they chose our area to do that and I’m happy that it happened,” Paganelli said. “I just wish some people were a little bit more in control of their greed.”