Too Many Shinies?

Sometimes, one suffers from success. In most Pokemon games, shiny Pokemon are stupidly rare and hard to get. It’s almost pure luck, and you can only increase your chances with bizarre methods, or by completely filling the game’s Pokedex, which gives you an item to make things ever so slightly easier. In Pokemon Scarlet and Violet though, hunting for shinies was made a lot easier, thanks to special sandwiches that boost the chance of shiny Pokemon appearing nearby. However, even Scarlet and Violet’s ways of getting shiny Pokemon are anywhere near as close as the chances in Pokemon GO.

In Pokemon GO, the chance of catching a wild shiny is about 1 in 500, but some Pokemon have lower chances. For example, Gible’s shiny chance is about 1 in 125. Depending on events, the chances of getting a shiny Legendary Pokemon (from a raid or otherwise) is anywhere between 1 in 70 and 1 in 25. Community Days introduce a 1 in 25 chance for catching the shiny of the event. Sure, the event only lasts 3 hours, but if there are a lot of Pokemon nearby, then you have plenty of opportunities to get at least one.

Sometimes though, you get too many shiny Pokemon. On the Grubbin Community Day, I managed an amazing 16 shiny Grubbins, some of which I evolved into Vikavolt and Charjabug. The small problem is, I don’t actually need 16 shiny Grubbin or its evolutions. I have too many shinies and don’t know what to do with them.

Well, what CAN I do for them?

My first thought is that I could trade these shinies. After all, I’m sure not everyone managed to get a shiny Grubbin. Some people are bound to have missed the event and would like one. However, actually finding someone who wants a shiny Grubbin is impossible because there’s no in-game communication, and no real community based around trading. Sure, I’m in some local Facebook groups and Discord servers, but they are mostly only for coordinating raids or showing off cool stuff. And I can’t look outside those circles, because there is no way to trade over a long distance. In Pokemon GO, you need to be within 100m of someone to trade.

Not to mention that such a trade would be expensive and cost a lot of star dust.

The only other real option is to simply delete them. But that just feels… wrong. After all, it’s a shiny Pokemon. The game doesn’t even let you mass-delete shiny Pokemon, you have to delete them one by one. What else can I do with them though? No one needs 16 shiny Grubbin after all. At most, you want a couple of Vikavolts, a Charjabug for PvP and maybe a couple of Grubbin to evolve later.

In the mean time though, I’ll probably just hold on to them. Sure, it’s a waste of storage space, but technically a lot of shinies are a waste of storage space. I don’t really need 10 shiny Charmanders, but I keep them anyway. I used to do mirror trades with extra shinies with my brother or my little account, in the hopes of getting a shiny, but these days, that too is a waste of star dust. Because we just delete them after a trade anyway. Most of the shinies you get have awful stats anyway, so trading them does give them a second chance. But it’s still a waste of star dust since the IVs rarely improve.

So yeah, too many shinies.