Most Pokémon TCG Pocket fans immediately spend their daily Pack Hourglasses like (non-rare) candy to open as many cards as possible and hunt those sweet shinies. For Cincinnati, Ohio based player Stuart Vincent, though, it’s the other way around. He’s using his cards and decks to collect hourglasses. And, after playing non stop since the September 2024 beta period, he’s somehow racked up a ridiculous 3,827 pristine, unused hourglasses.
For the uninitiated, in Pokémon TCG Pocket, you get one free booster pack of five random digital cards to open every 12 hours – but leveling up and completing challenges in the game grants you Pack Hourglasses that each knock one hour off your timer, letting you rip packs faster. These items are the main way of collecting Pokemon cards in the game, without either waiting or spending real money on its Pokégold currency to jump the queue.
Plus, the Hourglasses have no other use and there’s no in-game benefit to holding onto them – so most players just spend them right away, or save them up temporarily if a new set release is just around the corner.
Not so for 35 year old Cincinnati pizza restauranteur Stuart Vincent, though. For him, collecting hourglasses is now the game’s main aim. When he first shared screenshots of his collection in the r/PTCGP subreddit last month, his dragon’s hoard of hourglasses stood at 3,061.
Now it’s up to 3,827 and growing, he tells Wargamer: “I’m still finishing up the new trainer battles from the recent expansion so I’m missing some but I’ll be at 4,000 before you know it!”
It started slowly and innocently enough, says Vincent. “I started during the beta launch for New Zealand and I decided that since I got ‘early access’ to the game I wouldn’t spend any currency at all during that first month since every pack opened was a bonus above everyone else anyway.
“I had completed a decent amount of the initial collection and so I decided to save the hourglasses for the next pack release,” he adds. “This is when I started thinking about how many packs I could open with my growing collection.”
Seeing other players sharing pics of their piles of saved-up hourglasses quickly made it into a personal mission, though. “After a while I noticed I never saw anyone else with more hourglasses than me when people showed off their collections,” says Vincent, “so I decided to just keep collecting”.
“Before you know it, I’m like Smaug the dragon hoarding the hourglasses.”
To be clear, Vincent does open packs – he’s sitting on a respectable card collection including some sought after crown rarity gold rares, and needs to keep his decks up to date to keep winning challenges – but he never uses hourglasses. “Most days I just wake up, open 2 of my 3 packs a day (I’m a premium user) and close the app,” he explains.
“I’ll do any and all events to keep up with promo cards or hourglass rewards, but that’s my one and only goal anymore. I want hourglasses more than I want cards.”
As tabletop gamers, we know better than most the unique joy and allure of collecting for collecting’s sake – even if others don’t really understand the appeal. I’ve got several Warhammer 40k armies on my shelves that I don’t even much like, which stand testament to this truth. We nerds like to get stuff, and sometimes the stuff itself is valuable only to us.
In every game, there are fans who shun the ‘traditional’ goals and forge their own glorious – if technically pointless – path. The heroes we don’t need, but do deserve, and salute for their dedication. For Pokémon Pocket, that’s Stuart Vincent. Good on you, king!
Think you can beat his collection? Or just want to marvel at the sheer nerd-hoardery at play here? Come join the Pokémon TCG discussion in the Wargamer Discord community. It’s free, no hourglasses or Gold required!
Plus, you can catch up with what’s new in the physical game with our guides to all Pokemon sets and the best Pokemon packs to buy right now.
Source: Wargamer
