When Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket launched late last year, players immediately found that one of the key features promised by the title wasn’t available in-game. You couldn’t actually trade your cards in this trading card game, but that’s finally changing.
As of January 29th, everyone with a Pokémon TCG Pocket account has the ability to trade. It’s worth noting up front that not every card is tradable, but this feature should make it significantly easier for players to get the last card or two they need to complete a deck.
Pokémon TCG Pocket trading guide
First, let’s go over those restrictions. For now, you can only trade with friends, so if you haven’t made any friends on your account, you will not be able to trade cards. Additionally, you can only trade “one star” or “diamond” rarity cards from Genetic Apex and Mythical Island. You can check the rarity of a card in the bottom left corner. Trades also need to feature cards of the same rarity, so you can’t trade a 2-diamond Ivysaur for a 1-star Vaporeon art rare.
In order to complete trades with other players, you will have to consume hourglasses and trade tokens. You can acquire trade tokens by completing missions or in Obtain Items by consuming cards with a rarity of three diamonds or higher.
Now that you know the rules, it’s time to start trading. In order to get started, head to the Social Hub in the game (the middle tab) and tap the Trade button. From there, you will have the option to initiate a trade with a friend.
The Pokémon Company has already announced that it plans to “expand the lineup of tradeable cards in future updates.” Unfortunately, this suggests we can’t trade cards from the Space-Time Smackdown expansion when it launches on January 30th, but it should be possible to do so in the coming months as future expansions are announced.
