Sometimes
it seems that money can buy everything, even invade our most sacred hobbies.
On April 22, the controversial youtuber and influencer Logan
Paul decided that his new obsession is Japanese culture, and he proved
it by dropping the absurd amount of $550,000. Their goal? Purchase the original
magazines that contain the very first chapters of One Piece and Dragon
Ball. As expected, the community did not welcome him with open arms; In
fact, the massive funa has already begun and the internet is
literally burning against it.
From
"investor" to public enemy number one
Together
with his friend and partner Jeremy Padawer, the American got hold of graduated
copies of extreme rarity. To give you an idea of the level of the pieces, the
1984 magazine with Goku's debut obtained an almost perfect rating of 9.2, being
the best preserved copy known on the planet. For its part, the 1997 publication
where we see Monkey D. Luffy for the first time reached a brutal 9.0. However,
what really angered the community was the attitude of the content creator, who
did not hesitate to boast about his purchase by cataloging manga as a simple
financial "asset class" that he plans to continue exploiting,
confirming that he sees it more as a business than a work of art.
The fandom's reaction
was immediate and ruthless. Thousands of comments flooded his profiles accusing
him of being an opportunist who has never touched a volume or seen a complete
episode in his life. Even the popular streamer IShowSpeed got
into the lawsuit, throwing the based comment that he knows
absolutely nothing about the pirate franchise. The real terror behind this
collective tantrum is totally valid: if this type of millionaire outside the
community begins to see comics as investments to multiply their money, the
resellers will go crazy and the prices of collectors will go through the roof,
making it impossible for a normal fan to buy his favorite merchandise.
About
the Graded Sleeve Market
Although
for most of us buying a new sleeve at the local store is already a painful
expense, collecting original magazines from the 80s and 90s has become a
hyper-competitive luxury market. Serious collectors send these first editions
to rating companies that evaluate everything from the color of the leaves to
the minimal wear of the corners. Getting a 9.0 or higher is almost a miracle
due to the cheap and fragile paper used by Japanese publishers at the time,
which partly justifies why these historic gems reach
stratospheric values at international auctions when they fall into the hands of
tycoons.
