One Piece Card Power and Counter: What Every Cost Actually Buys

By CardSpicy Founder · October 20, 2026

Every One Piece Character card prints the same three numbers: a cost, a power, and sometimes a counter. The set code tells you where the card came from and the effect text tells you what it does, but the three numbers decide whether the card is playable. This page reads all 2,185 Character cards in Bandai’s English card database as numbers rather than as artwork, and asks a single question of each one: what does this cost actually buy?

Quick answer

Power tracks cost almost perfectly, and counter runs the opposite way. The single most common power on a Character card is 5,000, printed on 379 of the 2,185 (17.3%), with 6,000 close behind at 356 (16.3%). Only two cards in the entire game reach 13,000, both cost 10, and both are Gol.D.Roger. Counter moves in the other direction: 94% of one-cost Characters print one, and so does one of the 37 ten-cost Characters.

No price appears on this page. What is below is what the cards themselves state, and every figure can be checked against the database listed under Sources.

What this page counts

Bandai’s English card database lists 2,785 distinct card numbers across 60 products at the date shown under Sources. Counting by card type, that is 2,185 Character cards, 410 Event cards, 48 Stage cards and 142 Leader cards. This page covers the 2,185 Characters only; Leader cards are read separately on the Leader page, and the four card types are defined on what the game is.

Alternate art and parallel treatments share a card number with the card they reprint, so folding them in leaves 2,785 distinct cards rather than the 4,844 printings the database displays. That matches the count our own One Piece card index publishes, which is the cross-check for this page.

One convention before the numbers. A Character card that prints no power at all — an Event-like body, a support card — is counted as unprinted rather than as zero, and there are 152 of those. Percentages below are taken against all 2,185 so that they add up.

The power ladder, cost by cost

Each cost has a mainstream power value and a ceiling. The mainstream value is the single most common power at that cost; the ceiling is the highest power any card at that cost has ever reached, with the number of cards that reached it.

The ladder is close to linear up to cost 5 and then bends. From cost 1 to cost 5 the mainstream power rises one rung per cost — 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, 5,000, 6,000 — and each of those rungs covers the majority of cards printed at that cost. Above cost 5 the rungs stop moving in step with the cost: cost 7 and cost 8 share the same mainstream value of 8,000, so the seventh and eighth DON!! buy reliability rather than size.

That bend is why the top of the curve is so thin. Everything at 13,000 and 12,000 costs 10, and everything at 11,000 costs 9 or 10. Below that the same power is reachable earlier: 10,000 appears 20 times at cost 8, 9,000 appears 24 times at cost 7, and 8,000 appears 51 times as early as cost 6.

Counter is a low-cost stat

A printed counter is the value a Character card adds to a defence when it is discarded from hand instead of played. It is the one number on the card that only matters while the card is in your hand, and the database shows it being spent almost entirely on cheap cards.

Of the 2,185 Character cards, 1,333 print a counter of 1,000 (61.0%), 364 print 2,000 (16.7%), and 488 print none (22.3%). Split that by cost and the pattern is monotonic:

The 2,000 counter behaves the same way and dies sooner. Of the 364 cards that print one, 271 cost 3 or less and only five cost 6 or more; exactly one card at cost 8 prints a 2,000 counter, and none above it. A card can be large or it can be a defence, and the database almost never lets it be both.

The exceptions are worth naming because they are so few. OP16-017 LittleOars Jr. is a four-cost Red Character at 8,000 power that still prints a 1,000 counter — one of 106 cost-4 cards above 5,000 power and the only one above 7,000, and the only card in the pool that is both the sole occupant of its cost ceiling and a card you can discard for a counter. P-041 is the single ten-cost card that prints anything at all, at 1,000, and it sits in the same power band as the biggest cards in the game.

Two cards at 13,000, and ten names at 12,000

The top of the pool is narrow enough to list. Only OP09-118 and OP13-064 reach 13,000, they are the same character — Gol.D.Roger — and both cost 10.

The 12,000 band holds 28 cards, and every one of them costs 10. Their names are Buggy, Charlotte Linlin, Edward.Newgate, Five Elders, Kaido, Kaido & Linlin, Marshall.D.Teach, Monkey.D.Luffy, Rocks.D.Xebec and Shanks — ten characters, some of them printed at that size several times. The most-printed of them is Shanks, whose card page is here, and the ranked shortlist for Luffy is here.

One rung down, 11,000 is stranger than it looks. Three of the five print at cost 10, but two reach it at cost 9: ST16-004 Shanks and OP17-061 Lead Performers. Those two are the cheapest routes to a five-figure Character in the game, and they are the reason the cost-to-power ladder above bends rather than climbs.

Rarity moves power; colour does not

Two variables are usually assumed to shape a card’s size. Measured across the pool, only one of them does.

Rarity tracks size almost linearly from Rare upward: a Super Rare averages 2,000 more power than a Rare, and a Secret Rare averages 1,630 more than a Super Rare. Common and Uncommon are effectively the same card at 4,410 and 4,312, which is a difference of 2%. Rarity is a reasonable guess about how big a card is.

Colour is not. The six colours average between 4,692 (Red) and 5,090 (Purple), a spread of 398 power on a scale that runs to 13,000 — about 3% of the range, and smaller than the gap between Common and Rare alone. The colour of a card tells you what a deck can do with it, not how hard it hits. If you want to know a card’s size from a thumbnail, read the cost and the rarity; the colour frame will mislead you.

Reading a card from its numbers

Put together, the three numbers answer most of the questions a buyer has before reading the effect text.

• A one-cost Character at 3,000 power is the efficient extreme. Ten cards reach it, from OP03-008 Buggy to OP07-067 Tonjit. Nothing in the game returns more power per DON!! spent.
• A four-cost card at 5,000 power is the definition of ordinary. It is the most common result at that cost, at 238 of 407.
• A high-cost card with a counter is unusual enough to check twice. Above cost 8 there are two such cards in the entire pool.
• A 2,000 counter belongs on a cheap card. If you see one on something that costs 6 or more, the card is paying for the counter with its body.

None of this says which card to collect. It says which cards are shaped unusually, and the unusual ones are where a page like how to read a card number starts to matter: the code tells you the set, and the set tells you the print run. For the layer above the numbers — what the treatments and rarities are called — see card rarities explained.

Related reading

• What a Leader card is and what its numbers mean — the fourth card type, which this page excludes.
• Every One Piece set in order — the release sequence the card codes refer to.
• Every Trafalgar Law card and every Portgas.D.Ace card — two character indexes where these numbers appear card by card.

Frequently asked questions

How many One Piece cards have 12,000 power?

Twenty-eight, and every one of them costs 10. They belong to ten characters: Buggy, Charlotte Linlin, Edward.Newgate, Five Elders, Kaido, Kaido and Linlin, Marshall.D.Teach, Monkey.D.Luffy, Rocks.D.Xebec and Shanks. Above 12,000 there are only two cards in the game, both printings of Gol.D.Roger at 13,000, both cost 10.

What is the most common power on a One Piece Character card?

5,000, printed on 379 of the 2,185 Character cards, or 17.3%. It is followed by 6,000 at 356 cards and 2,000 at 264. The whole 5,000 to 7,000 band covers 938 cards, which is 42.9% of every Character card in the database.

Do more expensive cards always have a counter?

No, and the relationship runs the opposite way. 94% of one-cost Character cards print a counter, 80% at cost 5, 40% at cost 7 and 3% at cost 10. A card can be large or it can be a card you discard for a counter; the database rarely lets it be both above cost 8.

Does the colour of a card affect its power?

Barely. The six colours average between 4,692 and 5,090 power, a spread of about 3% of the scale. Rarity is the variable that tracks size: Common averages 4,410, Rare 4,701, Super Rare 6,745 and Secret Rare 8,375.

Where do these numbers come from?

The official ONE PIECE CARD GAME English card database, read on 2026-10-20 across all 60 series. Alternate art and parallel versions were folded into the card number they reprint, which leaves 2,785 distinct cards and matches the count our own One Piece index publishes.

Sources

Sources and method

1. Card data read from the official ONE PIECE CARD GAME English card database, en.onepiece-cardgame.com/cardlist, retrieved 2026-10-20. All 60 series were read; alternate art and parallel printings were folded into the card number they reprint, leaving 2,785 distinct cards.
2. Card type definitions and the four-type split (Character, Event, Stage, Leader) from the same database’s card entries.
3. Counter mechanics as described in the ONE PIECE CARD GAME Official Rule Manual, Counter Step, asia-en.onepiece-cardgame.com/pdf/manuel_en.pdf.
4. Counts of 2,785 cards across 60 products are consistent with the figure published on what the One Piece Card Game is; both come from the same database at the same date.
5. Rarity labels are the database’s own single-letter codes: C, UC, R, SR, SEC. Promotional cards carry a separate P label and are excluded from the rarity table.

Where to go next

• The CardSpicy card index — every card we track, with its PSA 10 population and market history (195 cards).
• The illustrator index — every artist behind those cards, card by card (110 artists).