Quick answer
Every One Piece card carries an illustrator credit printed on the card itself, in the small line beside the set code at the bottom. CardSpicy keeps that credit in view on its One Piece card index, and this page is the entry point to collecting by illustrator rather than by character, set or rarity.
The character on a card is decided by the story. The way the card looks is decided by one person, and their name is on it.
Most collectors follow characters, and that is the natural thing to do: a Luffy card is a Luffy card. But a large part of what makes two Luffy cards feel different from each other is not the character at all. It is the hand that drew them, and that hand is credited in print on every card, in a line small enough that most people never read it.
Where the illustrator credit is
On a One Piece card the credit sits in the bottom strip, next to the card number and the set code, printed in the same small type as the legal line. It names the individual illustrator, or the studio, that produced the artwork for that specific printing.
The reason that matters for a collector is that the credit is per printing, not per character. When a character is reprinted with new art — and in this game a reprint with new art is one of the commonest things that happens — the card number stays the same and the illustrator changes. Two cards can share a number, a name and a set code and still be drawn by two different people, and the only thing on the card that tells you so is that bottom strip.
The illustrators worth knowing
One Piece is drawn by a smaller and more stable roster than most trading card games. A core group of illustrators has carried the game since ROMANCE DAWN in December 2022 and returns set after set, which means an illustrator collection is unusually coherent: a handful of names covers a large share of the pool, and a full run of any one of them is a real collecting goal rather than an impossible one.
Alongside that core, the game uses guest illustrators for specific high-profile treatments. A guest is invited for a particular card or a particular set rather than joining the roster, so their credits are few, identifiable and impossible to confuse with anyone else’s work.
The clearest guest credit: Amano on OP-18
The best-documented guest credit in the game so far is Yoshitaka Amano, announced as the guest illustrator for the OP-18 set, The Dominance of God, releasing November 20, 2026.
Amano is known outside card games entirely — he is the illustrator most associated with the Final Fantasy series and has worked in fine art, character design and book illustration for decades. His One Piece credits are two of the set’s Secret Rare parallel treatments, on Loki and on Saint Shamrock. In practice that means the same two cards exist in an ordinary Secret Rare printing and in an Amano printing, with the card number unchanged between them — which is exactly the situation described above, where the only thing separating the two objects is the artwork and the credit line.
That makes OP-18 a natural entry point for this index: it is a single set, it has a small and well-documented number of guest credits, and the difference between the two printings of each card is the whole point of the collection.
How to collect by illustrator
Three approaches, in rough order of how easy they are to finish.
The first is a guest run: one guest illustrator, their handful of credits, done. This is short, documented and affordable outside the top treatments, which is why it is where most illustrator collections start.
The second is a signature-card run: the cards that define an illustrator’s style in this game, usually Secret Rares and special treatments, rather than a complete list. It is a judgment call rather than a checklist, which is why it holds up better over time.
The third is the full roster run: every card credited to one of the core illustrators. This is the long game. Because the core illustrators return set after set, a complete run means acquiring cards across the entire print run, including low-rarity commons that are cheap individually and tedious in bulk.
What this index does and does not do
Stated plainly, because the honest answer is more useful than a long list. This page is an entry point, and the per-illustrator pages that a full index would need are not built yet.
The reason is a data one. Bandai’s card database, which is what our One Piece index is built from, lists numbered cards with their type, colour, cost and rarity — but it does not carry the illustrator credit as a field. The credit lives on the printed card. That means an illustrator index cannot be generated from the same source as the rest of our index; it has to be assembled credit by credit, and a half-built index that guessed at credits would be worse than none.
So the honest position is this: the credits are real, they are on the cards, and they are worth collecting. Our coverage of them begins here and will fill in, set by set, starting with the set that has the smallest and most identifiable guest list.
Frequently asked questions
Where is the illustrator named on a One Piece card?
In the bottom strip of the card, printed in small type beside the card number and the set code. It names the illustrator or studio responsible for that printing’s artwork.
Can two cards with the same number have different illustrators?
Yes. The credit is per printing rather than per character, so a reprint with new artwork keeps the card number and changes the illustrator. The bottom strip is the only place on the card that records this.
Did Yoshitaka Amano illustrate One Piece cards?
Yes. Amano is credited as the guest illustrator on two OP-18 Secret Rare parallel treatments, on Loki and on Saint Shamrock, in the set releasing November 20, 2026.
Does this site list every card by every illustrator?
Not yet. Bandai’s card database does not carry the illustrator as a field, so an illustrator index cannot be generated from it. This page is an entry point; per-illustrator coverage is being added set by set.
Is an illustrator collection cheaper than a character collection?
That depends entirely on the illustrator. A guest run of a few documented credits can be short; a complete run of a core illustrator spans the whole print run and includes large numbers of low-rarity cards. The two are different projects rather than one being an easier version of the other.
Sources
Sources and further reading
- Bandai — the official One Piece Card Game card database, for the card numbers, set codes and rarities referred to above; the illustrator credit itself is printed on the card rather than listed in the database.
- Bandai — OP-18 The Dominance of God product announcements, including the guest illustrator credit for the set’s Secret Rare parallel treatments.
- Yoshitaka Amano Inc. — the illustrator’s own statement of the OP-18 guest credit.
- CardSpicy — the One Piece card index, where every indexed card is shown with its type, colour, cost and treatment.
- CardSpicy — One Piece chase cards, by treatment, for the parallel treatments that carry most guest credits.
Prices are not quoted on this page. CardSpicy prices graded cards in US dollars from observed sales; this page describes who illustrated which printing, and a figure here would be a different number measured a different way. Where a set or an illustrator is described, the set code, the card number and the release date are the English edition.