Solana has launched what it claims to be the first tokenized manga in history through its Phygitals marketplace. The platform successfully tokenized a 1997 One Piece manga issue that carries the main characters' debut appearance before the first collected volume reached shops. According to reports from Phygitals, the tokenized version is backed by one of the 118 graded copies worldwide of this rare magazine issue.
The One Piece manga, written by Eiichiro Oda, was initially published in Shonen Jump magazine No. 34 of 1997. As reported by Phygitals, readers treated the magazine as cheap, throwaway newsprint, with most copies going straight to the bin. The issue has since become incredibly scarce, with grading firms counting only 118 copies worldwide. Despite this rarity, the manga has achieved remarkable success, passing 600 million published copies worldwide in March, as announced by publisher Shueisha on volume 114's jacket band.
The scarcity has attracted forgers, with reprints and outright fakes flooding resale sites, and an official 2017 reprint edition adding further confusion. According to Heritage Auctions, which ran a Beckett-graded copy in March, authentication has become the main hurdle for buyers. Reference guides put ungraded first prints in the low hundreds, while graded slabs trade in a separate market. Phygitals addresses this challenge by sealing one of the 118 graded copies inside a digital pack, allowing buyers to skip authentication guesswork through tokenized verification.
The broader collectibles market has shown strong momentum, with the RWA market cap jumping to $71 billion this month. As reported by Phygitals, the platform backs every token with one graded item held in vault custody, allowing holders to request shipment at any point while the digital copy is retired. Solana itself posted a record onchain activity in August, with SOL trading near $107.21, up 5.9% on the day and 46.3% over the past month. The Solana Foundation also signed an SBI partnership in Japan in July to build yen-based onchain markets.
According to Phygitals, this marks the first onchain venue for manga collectibles, with trading cards having taken years to build real liquidity. The platform notes that anime fandom dwarfs the sports card audience in raw size, suggesting significant potential for the tokenized collectibles market. However, critics flag the obvious weak point that tokens only hold value while the custodian keeps the item safe and honors redemption, with provenance moving onchain but the paper never doing so.
