Logan Paul Fires Back at ‘One Piece’ Fans Who Say He Has No Right to Own the World’s Rarest Chapter
Logan Paul has spent years building one of the most ostentatious memorabilia collections in pop culture history. Taking a pivot from his multi-million dollar Pokémon card acquisitions and dinosaur fossils, the influencer-turned-WWE superstar has now ventured into the world of premium manga. For longtime collectors, that shift was bound to make waves.
The manga community Paul has entered is not a casual one. ‘One Piece‘ alone has surpassed 600 million copies sold worldwide, making it one of the most iconic manga series ever produced. It is a fandom built on years of deep devotion, and its community has never been known to greet outsiders quietly.
Paul revealed he had spent a record $550,000 on ultra-rare, graded copies of the very first chapters of ‘One Piece’ and ‘Dragon Ball’. The crown jewel of the purchase is his ‘Dragon Ball’ Chapter One issue boasting an incredibly rare 9.2 grade, standing alone as the single highest-graded copy in existence with a population of just one. The second half of his haul is a ‘One Piece’ Chapter One holding a near-mint 9.0 grade, making it the second-highest graded copy known to exist with a population of just three, and the first-ever canonical appearance of the beloved pirate protagonist Monkey D. Luffy.
The criticism came swiftly and from all corners, with Paul’s purchase especially outraging ‘One Piece’ fans. Fellow influencer IShowSpeed also chimed in publicly, saying Paul does not actually know anything about the series. Some fans raised concerns about the wider impact on the resale market, warning that wealthy collectors entering the manga space could make online listings significantly worse for casual enthusiasts.
Paul’s initial response leaned hard into provocation, posting a photo of himself dressed as Luffy while reading the manga on a private jet, captioning it with a joke that he was not convinced the One Piece was real. It was a classically calculated troll, and it worked exactly as intended, keeping the discourse burning for weeks.
By May 6, he dropped the act and addressed the situation candidly on an episode of his IMPAULSIVE podcast, where co-host Mike Majlak tested him with ‘One Piece’ trivia and framed the fanbase’s frustration as a fear that Paul was trying to monetize their community, much like scalpers have exploited Pokémon.
Paul pushed back with a composed but pointed response, telling Dexerto that fans are not the “gatekeepers of a hobby that was made for people to read, to watch, to enjoy, to collect, to get inspired by,” and that he considers himself fully entitled to buy what he finds cool and what represents a piece of anime history.
Paul also described himself as a casual fan of the ‘One Piece’ series and categorized the rare chapters as a strategic alternative asset class, framing the purchase as both a personal passion and a calculated long-term investment. Whether that framing satisfies the ‘One Piece’ community or deepens their frustration is another question entirely, so it is worth asking: do you think there is a meaningful difference between collecting something out of love versus collecting it as an asset, and does Paul’s reasoning change how you feel about where these chapters ended up?
