TPCi (The Pokemon Company international) has officially announced the details of the upcoming trade system for Pokemon Pocket via X.
Confirmed Information
A while back, some information regarding the Trade System update circulated the internet from online communities such as Reddit.
The story so far was that the Trade Tokens used to facilitate the trading of higher rarity cards will be phased out. This would then be replaced by Shine Dust, currently used to add aesthetic flair to a player’s cards.
So far, according to the official announcement, this has held true. Shine Dust will indeed be used to facilitate the trading of 3-Diamond, 4-Diamond, and 1-Star rarity cards in the game of Pokemon Pocket.
In the original announcement back in March, TPCi had mentioned that they were looking to increase the amount of Shine Dust received when obtaining a card already registered in the player’s Card Dex.
With this new announcement, TPCi has stated that the amount of Shine Dust received will now be doubled after the implementation of this update.
Additional information on the Wishlist system was also revealed. Players will be able to create a wish list of 20 cards from their ‘My Cards’ menu of the game.
Slots of up to 3 of the wishlisted cards will be available for display on a user’s profile.
Trade Token Phase Out
Part of TPCi’s process in phasing out Trade Tokens includes an exchange shop. Players will be able to exchange all their Trade Tokens for Shine Dust at a rate of 1:10. This exchange can be done in increments of 10, 100, and 1,000 at a time.
TPCi also included a limited number of Pack Hourglasses in this exchange shop. Players will be able to exchange up to 60 Trade Tokens for up to 60 Pack Hourglasses, an exchange rate of 1:1.
This is pretty generous of the developers, as this is equivalent to 5 pack openings for the average player.
According to the announcement, players will be able to make these conversions at the in-game shop.
Schedule Details
According to the official announcement, TPCi has confirmed that the current trade function will be unavailable starting from the 24th of July at 11 pm PDT to the 29th of July at 10:59 pm PDT.
The main update will happen on the 29th of July, 11 pm PDT. TPCi has mentioned that some slight time variance may occur depending on a user’s device.
While TPCi hasn’t mentioned it officially, we can make a possible assumption that the developers are giving enough time between the 24th and the 29th of July for any active trade sequences to clear before the update goes live.
It’s a small detail that wasn’t addressed, but a little more transparency when it comes to system upgrades might go a long way for either building rapport with the player base or lessening the general confusion that may crop up.
On a smaller note, TPCi also confirmed that players will not be able to exchange excess copies of cards for Trade Tokens after the 29th of July, 6 pm PDT.
Things Left Unaccounted For
Unfortunately for the community at large, despite all the information provided by TPCi, they still did not clarify the amount of Shine Dust required when trading cards, nor if there are different rates depending on the rarity of the cards being traded.
With this lack of information, we have members of online communities, like Reddit, asking others if they should save their Trade Tokens or use most of them before the conversion rates hit.
Another thing players are taking umbrage with is the limited scope of the trade system despite the update. There are still 5 levels of rarity above 1-Star, from the Special/CG Art Rare (2-Star) to the vaunted Crown Rare.
Long-time players of the game would more than likely have the odd copy or two of these cards available for trade. At the moment, it looks like these cards will have to just sit around and collect dust in their users’ accounts.