The card trading system in Pokémon TCG Pocket is being overhauled and improved in response to fan feedback, thank goodness. Trade Tokens, the miserable currency required to trade rare cards, and which can only be earnt by sacrificing other rare cards, will be gone “by the end of Autumn 2025”.
An announcement on the official Pokémon TCG Pocket community website explains how this will work. Trading cards of three diamond, four diamond, or one star rarity with another player will now cost Shine Dust, the currency you receive whenever you open duplicate cards in a pack.
When the change is implemented and Trade Tokens are scrapped, it will be possible to cash them out for Shine Dust. In addition, the amount of Shine Dust you receive for opening duplicates will be increased, as it will still be used to buy cosmetic Flair for cards.
As before, you’ll be able to swap one diamond and two diamond cards freely. This update doesn’t add the ability to trade the rarest Pokémon cards that you can receive duplicates of, those with two star or promo rarities. But according to the announcement, this is something the developers are investigating.
Another neat quality of life feature will also roll out in Autumn: it will be possible to share which cards you’re interested in trading through the trade interface itself. The lack of such a feature has been a really groanworthy omission. Offering trades and responding to your trade partner’s return offer one card at a time makes trading an utter slog, unless you have a way to communicate outside the game.
The binder system already lets us show off our prettiest and most powerful Pokémon cards – trade binders just make sense.
Trade Stamina is sticking around. Most of the time this isn’t a hassle, but it really puts the dampeners on in-person meetups as you realise you’ve only got five trades (plus any extras you can buy with hourglasses) to swap cards with your Poképals.
We’re glad to see fan feedback being acted on. My colleague Mollie Russell was about ready to quit the game in boredom (see this feature for her reasons), and then the developers went and dropped Triumphant Light. Its whacky new designs proved that not all Pokémon sets in the game would be as predictable and simple as what had come before. It’s reignited our whole team’s interest!
Source: Wargamer
