Weekly Shonen Jump reportedly sold out across Japan after resellers bought up copies for an exclusive promotional One Piece Card Game card bundled with the magazine. The shortage mattered because it prevented ordinary readers from buying one of Japan’s most recognisable manga publications, including an issue containing the final chapter of Blue Box. More broadly, the incident shows how trading card speculation is now affecting not just hobby shops but mainstream book and magazine sales.

The article says many fans posted on social media that they had not seen the magazine become this hard to find in years, if ever, because of scalpers. Blue Box creator Kouji Miura responded on X to apologise to readers who missed the chance to read the ending in print. Polygon places the incident in a wider trend: trading card games such as Pokémon, Disney Lorcana, Magic: The Gathering and Bandai’s One Piece game have seen rising resale activity, and Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa has also recently acknowledged scalping problems around Pokémon cards.