One Piece’s Sabo and the Ichiban Kuji Prize Lottery Explained

Sabo Small Plate from Ichiban Kuji One Piece (Prize I, Bandai Spirits)

What Ichiban Kuji Is and How This Plate Fits In

Ichiban Kuji is a prize lottery brand operated by Bandai Spirits — a Bandai Namco subsidiary focused on collector and hobby merchandise. It occupies its own category, separate from gashapon capsule machines or snack-pack food toys. Instead of a vending machine or blind box, Ichiban Kuji is sold over the counter at convenience stores and toy shops across Japan. Customers draw a ticket and receive the prize that corresponds to the rank they land on.

Those prize tiers run alphabetically from A downward through multiple grades. The later letters — typically G, H, I and beyond — are reserved for smaller goods: mugs, pouches, keyrings, and small ceramic dishes like this one. This plate is a Prize I piece from a One Piece-themed Ichiban Kuji release, glazed white and printed with a bust-up illustration of Sabo set against a bold black brushstroke background with gold and ochre Japanese-style lettering. Bandai Spirits has produced several Ichiban Kuji One Piece campaigns featuring Sabo since the character’s return to the story, though the specific series and year of this particular release cannot be determined from the listing information alone.

Sabo: The Brother Who Was Supposed to Be Dead

One Piece is the manga by Eiichiro Oda, serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump since 1997 and still running. Its worldwide volume count has exceeded 500 million copies, earning a Guinness World Record for the most copies of a comic series published by a single author. The anime, produced by Toei Animation since 1999, has aired in over a hundred countries.

Sabo carries some of the heaviest emotional weight in the entire series. As children, he, Portgas D. Ace, and protagonist Monkey D. Luffy swore brotherhood together. For years readers believed Sabo had died as a boy — killed when a Celestial Dragon, one of the story’s ruling world nobles, fired a cannon at his ship. His survival was revealed during the Dressrosa arc (approximately 2013 to 2014 in the manga), where he reappeared as Chief of Staff of the Revolutionary Army, the No. 2 under commander Monkey D. Dragon.

In those same events, Sabo inherited the Mera Mera no Mi — the Flame-Flame Fruit once belonging to Ace, who had died earlier in the story. Taking up Ace’s ability made Sabo a living continuation of his brother’s legacy in a way the fanbase found deeply significant. His signature look: blonde hair and a burn scar over his left eye, left by the cannon blast he survived as a child. He typically wears a top hat, but this plate’s illustration drops it, presenting a close bust-up that puts the scar and the intensity of the character front and center.

Japan-Only Distribution and What That Means for Fans Abroad

Ichiban Kuji is sold exclusively within Japan through participating retail locations — convenience store chains like 7-Eleven, Lawson, and FamilyMart, as well as select toy shops. There is no official international distribution channel. The only path to ownership for fans outside Japan runs through the secondary market: items carried out of the country by individual buyers. For collectors who follow One Piece but cannot travel to Japan, that structure makes Ichiban Kuji pieces genuinely difficult to obtain through any other route.

Ceramic goods also occupy a different space from the plastic figures that dominate most anime merchandise lines. They are functional objects that display differently, and this particular one depicts one of One Piece’s most emotionally resonant characters in a format that does not appear in every product wave — which is part of what draws international One Piece fans toward Ichiban Kuji releases in the first place.