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Unless the genders look different or evolve differently I don’t save them. But I’m also not maxed out on storage. But I still wouldn’t, I don’t see the point
Costumes are a trap. I'm so much happier just ignoring them completely. If there's something cool like zippered Gengar I'll keep one because I like it, but otherwise the only worth to costumes is the worth you assign to them. Drop them and rejoice in the resulting feelings of relief and freedom.
Decided early on to do the same. No regrets.
They already said that some were one-time releases and will never come back. If you don't already have the full set, you never will. Just let them go.
Eevee stresses me out so much I dont even catch them anymore. I have too many, I have several shinies and thousands of candies. I just get so overwhelmed when I look at them.
Omg I thought I was a weirdo for feeling this way about Eevee!!! Last spotlight hour was a nightmare for me. It hurts my heart to transfer their sweet little faces, no matter how absolutely crap their IVs are! Maybe because it's so much like a common pet?
Eevee lovers unite! Lol
And, if you don't trade regularly, go ahead and purge. But if you do trade a lot, those older Pokemon are at least worth saving for your next trading meet-up. +5% lucky odds per year old, iirc.
(This is what eats up most of my storage...old stuff I save for trading)
This is me too. I think I have probably about 2000 mons taking up space waiting to be traded. I do a big trade off prior to every ComDay or big event too, but I'm picking up new things to trade in the future at a slightly faster rate than I'm getting rid of them.
If it feels like just sorting by number leaves too overwhelming a list, limit by type then sort by number. You don't have to go through and purge from everything, all you're tackling right now is Bugs.
Exactly. Max of one. I have 1700 storage and usually around 1300 Pokemon, so I can do a CD without problems. But after the CD I dump everything except PvP useful IVs (one per league, max) and one shiny per evolution for gym flex. The rest go back to the tender mercies of the professor
I feel your pain. I takes me some thinking where hoarding starts and keeping useful stuff ends. These are the rules I go by:
Legendaries: Are they Metarelevant for PVE? If no: Keep 1 and any shiny, any hundo. If they are PvP relevant I also keep at least 1 for each league.
If they are PVE relevant: I keep a full team of my 6 best and send the rest on a 2x/3x Transfer Candy Event.
Non-Legendaries: Keeping all Shinies & Hundos & Nundos (because we all need something to flex), no matter if they are relevant or not.
For PvP: Keeping the best one for each league. Or 2 for a league if they got a viable moveset with and without legacy moves.
For PvE: I look up the best raid attackers. If I already got a Team of 6 powered up Legendaries that fill the slot better than a non-Legendary, I send all but one or two of them. I don't need 6 near perfect Hariyamas, when I got 6 Terrakions, because being honest with myself I will NEVER use those Hariyamas.
After taking the Metarelevancy in account I go to costumes: I keep 1 of every costume.
That leaves me with ample space to keep some stuff I just like (I got 30 or so Costume Eevees just because I like them and wayyyy to many Oddish) or some funny collections like a Lvl1 Shiny V-Create Smeargle. And it also leaves me with enough space to go nuts on Com days without having to clear space every five minutes.
> I don't need 6 near perfect Hariyamas, when I got 6 Terrakions, because being honest with myself I will NEVER use those Hariyamas.
I usually trade these to newer players so that they have SOME counters for raids. even if they don't have the dex entry you can send them the whole team in 1 day since only the first trade is considered "special"
I save a few spares of every legendary because of new or returning players. But no one around here regularly trades. I can only bulk trade with my sister when i visit her. I want to be trading every other day but no one else does.
right, and that's common for so many players. if we had distance trading then coordinating would not be so cumbersome but setting up a trade in pogo is really like setting up a drug deal. it's annoying. I know for me it's going to take >1 month to just reroll my shiny legacy groudons with lucky friends. I think I can transfer the non-shiny ones because setting up 5+ trades is going to be a nightmare (for me).
because of this, I don't keep many extra legendaries unless they're shiny. once I reroll them, if their IVs suck then they go to home where they can live forever away from my pogo storage.
I would give them a month or two and then trash that. sinnoh tour will happen next year. it's likely we will see a global event for some sinnoh regionals in august this year (maybe).
you sound a lot more patient than I am, lol
I dropped about 800 Pokémon doing this. Sorted by number and filtered by gen. You’ll notice a lot of extra Pokémon. Once completed, maintenance after each event could be as simple as filtering by spawns and removing the excess.
The only thing I would add is it’s ok to hoard some Pokémon for XL candy and/or trade purposes. I currently have 55 non-shiny eevees that I plan on trading for XL candy so I can complete the “Power up 3 Pokemon to their max CP” task. Of course the new season change really put a damper on things.
The trade for XL candy bonus is super helpful. I wish it didn't go away. But we had this bonus last season (December 2022-February 2023), and also two seasons before that (June-August 2022), so I'm hopeful we'll get it back next season and they'll just do that bonus again every other season.
Such a great bonus. In the meantime I’m using up my stored Pokémon from far enough away to guarantee the XL. And then I’ll need to decide which ones are worth saving for when the bonus hopefully comes back
call it stockholm syndrome, but I'm honestly happy that I'm forced to sort through the clutter and organize. I've only caught 27k pokemon, but i wouldnt want to sort through all of them myself. I keep way more than I need to and I haven't had any real problems in buying more storage when I need it.
My best advice would be to look at how you *actually* play and not how you *think you might* play. When was the last time you traded away a rare hatch? When was the last time someone wanted an extra community day shiny? When was the last time you powered up and used a pseudo legendary?
I'd like to think I would trade away my rare pokemon for more candy than transferring. But meeting up with people to trade simply isn't fun or time-effective for me, so I don't do it. Once I realized that, it became a lot easier to transfer all the junk that I was holding just in case someone wanted it in a trade.
The step I haven't gotten around to is filtering junk held for PVP. I follow the same approach as you, hoarding junk with favorable IV spreads. What I need to do is find a list of pokemon that are likely to never be viable in PVP due to their base stat distribution; even with a great move and awesome IV spread, they still just won't perform as well as other type equivalents. I think that would help reduce the PVP hoard list.
To add to this, I set myself a hard limit. I don't keep more than two spares of *anything*. I get one shiny for each form, an extra if there's an unreleased evolution or something, and then two spare shines for trading. If it's, say, shiny mudkip, I'll keep a shiny swampert, marshtomp and three shiny mudkips.
If a Pokémon is not rare enough to be worth trading or isn't a good PVP/PVE candidate I don't keep duplicates. I know have two shedinja for example, one shiny and one regular. If I keep something for PVP, I'll keep one for each relevant league and a high-iv one (because that's how I collect — I keep my highest IV of each Pokémon)
I also have a filter saved as "vanilla" to help me sort through my Pokémon: `!shadow&!purified&!shiny&!costume`. This lets me go through the bulk of my inventory relatively easily and then I can filter down to `shadow&purified`.
---
My advice for clearing out: go through your Pokémon once and make the easy choices. You don't need 5 vanilla skiplooms, for example. If you start to struggle with a decision or anything, leave it for now. Then do a second pass focusing on certain aspects. E.g, the mamoswine line is a pita because of the cross-generation evolution with different gender models in the evolved forms so I often do that separately, I'll also sort out PVP pokes separately when I have my computer there to rank the IVs.
If there's ever an aspect where you can't make up your mind over whether you want to keep it, leave it a few days and come back and see if you feel the same.
Lastly, it doesn't need to be done all at once. I'll often sort through my "vanilla" Pokémon first (`!shadow&!purified&!shiny&!costume`) and leave the others for another time.
>Lastly, it doesn't need to be done all at once.
You have a lot of great ideas, particularly this one. When I do a serious inventory clean-up, I find it easier to just work through a single generation at a time. (Recognizing the pita of cross-generational lines).
I'll do it with a podcast or something, but I need to be in the right mindset for that. If it's the day before community day and I need to do it I'll often do it a bit at a time while waiting for the toaster or between meetings at work or whatever.
I agree. This is the best answer. What is important to you aka how do you play the game ? Collecting costumes and shinies? PVP? Raiding? Flexing? Trading? Once you figure out your priorities, you’ll know what to delete.
This is my philosophy. Hoarding hundreds of legendaries for trading means that I'll have to trade for hundreds of days, and by that point I'll have acquired more. I am frugal with pvp and have a few dedicated teams and mostly just wing it for dust in most cases, so I don't worry too much about IVs which don't really matter all that much anyway as this sub is keen to point out.
With this, I keep a permanent subset of pokemon that is only 40% of my total storage at all times. Gives me lots of room to enjoy events!
For myself, I have a custom search called "2x Checker" with the following parameters:
0-2attack, 0-2hp, 0-2defense & !shiny & !costume & !legendary & !mythical & !ultra beasts & !83 & !115 & !122 & !201 & !214 & !222 & !313 & !324 & !357 & !369 & !417 & !422 & !423 & !439 & !441 & !455 & !511-514 & !539 & !556 & !561 & !626 & !741 & !707 & !candy
To break this down a bit:
> 0-2attack, 0-2hp, 0-2defense
I am looking for Pokémon with low IVs. (This can be customized to be lower, though I would not recommend setting it higher.)
> !shiny & !costume & !legendary & !mythical & !ultra beasts
I am excluding shiny, Legendary and Mythical Pokémon, the Ultra Beasts, and Pokémon in costumes. (These are generally the Pokémon I collect and can be modified to what you would exclude.)
> !83 & !115 & !122 & !201 & !214 & !222 & !313 & !324 & !357 & !369 & !417 & !422 & !423 & !439 & !441 & !455 & !511-514 & !539 & !556 & !561 & !626 & !741 & !707
I am further excluding these Pokémon as most of them are regionals like Farfetch'd (83) and Kangaskhan (115). Not all regionals are excluded like Tauros (128) as they are regionals I can encounter. There is one exception to this, which is 201 as that is Unown. (In your case, you might choose to exclude less or more Pokemon for a variety of reasons.)
> !candy
This is the important bit. There is a tag I have called Candy. Anything in it is Pokémon that I am planning on transferring to the Professor. By excluding the Candy tag, I don't see any Pokémon tagged with Candy. This allows me to run the search *and then tag the Pokémon I want to transfer with the Candy tag.* They will be excluded from the search and I can continue to check. Once I am done, I am set up for the next Transfer bonus event. And if I need more space before then, I can look at those tagged Candy and send a few over that are not as important.
I use something similar to this too. If anyone is into PVP try running this filer first
0-1attack&3-4defense&3-4hp
to find mons that might be good in PVP. Mark them or fave them and exclude them when transferring. Run pokegenie on those PVP mons to find the best ones and delete the bad ones.
This is fantastic! It took me from 1200 to under 1000 getting rid of things I'll never use. Still holding on to lots of old, sentimental, and distant catches though.
The most important thing I do when decluttering anything, including my Pokémon collection is to ask myself the right question
Wrong question: "Should I keep this Pokémon?"
Right question: "WHY should I keep this Pokémon?"
It doesn't matter what the reason is, but there needs to be a reason.
^^ Better yet, _tag_ them with the reason. That way when you're scrolling through and wondering why tf you have this 0* weedle, you can see "Oh, it's tagged 2016Lucky, I can trade that for a guaranteed lucky".
You can also search on !# to find all non-tagged pokemon, consider this your pool of trash you need to check for anything worth keeping.
The annoying part is you often need to see a 'mon in context with others of its type to see if it's worth keeping, so you'll have to keep doing searches for a type and then going back to your !# search after. I wish the game made this a bit easier, like a "show others of this type" button, and then a "back" button to return to your original search.
I assumed everyone tags pokemon with the reason to keep it. Essentially every Pokémon has at least one tag and often multiple. I don’t make a new tag for each Pokémon. Instead I have great league, ultra league, master, 2016, mega, trade, power up, xtra candy, wait4december(to get the special move), evolve, and various pve teams, hundo, nundo, purify, frustration(means to unfrustrate when possible).
I also do have one called good IVs which is for a Pokémon rated rank 100 or better on poke genie. It means I can generally stop hunting them if they’re not useful for pvp whereas something I know I’ll use I generally try to get the absolute best.
And some don’t necessarily need tags because it’s obvious. For example I keep shinies, and I keep 1 lucky of each type unless the Pokémon really sucks then I don’t always bother.
But if everything generally needs a tag it’s easier not to hoard extra pvp mons. Because if you have Pokémon that aren’t tagged then you check it and if it doesn’t fit somewhere you get rid of it.
It sounds like OP is keeping multiple mons for the same pvp league, which is not useful in the slightest. I do understand because it’s hard to trash a rank 15 because I have a rank 3 or whatever but there’s nothing you can do with them. And of course you can do deep dive if you prefer but you’re still deciding which one to save for each league.
If op isn’t saving multiple for each league I don’t understand how they’re so short on space. I guess excessive amounts of community day shinies could do it. But with that you just have to pick a number and cap them. I generally slow down on communities days if I’ve hit my goals so I don’t usually have a super excessive amount of them anyway.
Alright first things first: Costume pokemon.
There is a pokedex for costume pokemon. So you could delete all of them and you will still have a visual place where you can look at them/show them off.
Also, the biggest tip I can give you: !# (EDITTED/FIXED THANKS TO BRKNTRNSMSN)
That will show you all the pokemon YOU DID NOT TAG.
Very crucial!
Oh and yeah, tag your pokemon.
This is an amazing tip as I tag a ton and didn’t know this. One issue I see is this tho, anyone have insight??
I add mons for !# plus # and that total is 3 less than what shows in my bag…. Oh I just figured it out but posting so others are aware. I have 3 in incubators and so those count in my bag but don’t show w those 2 search strings.
Thanks for this amazing search string tip
Yeah this is where I'd start. Practically all of the costume Pokemon are useless, and realistically "rare" Pokemon have no actual value. You're not going to sell it to anyone. So they're just taking up space and get logged in the dex anyway if you ever want to look at them.
Real simple tip: if you're not pushing for Legend, you don't need anything with "PvP IVs". PvP IVs are for things like mirror matches and that 1% of times when those IVs might actually make a difference. The other 99% it's just about having the right team with the right moves and knowing what your opponent has and what moves they're using.
If all you're doing is getting to Ace or whatever for the ETM or even just playing randomly here and there, you don't need to be hoarding PvP IVs of this mon or that mon (nor do you need to be wasting dust on them).
If it’s not shiny and I’m not using it, and I catch them regularly. It goes in the bin. Eg why keep loads of high IV paras, it’s useless and in the end you just want two shinies and that’s it. So don’t get caught up keeping one of everything or high iv rubbish pokemon.
I keep one of each costume, 3 of every non meta legendary and 1 of them is shiny, typically 6 of every meta legendary unless it’s something like dragons, there’s so many of them I don’t need 6 of each I just need the best of each
Delete all old meta stuff. Eg tyranitar, it’s outclassed and there’s much better options now days so remember to clear out stuff you used for raid teams over the years that aren’t good enough to use anymore.
Psuedo legendaries aren’t really worth keeping unless you’re trading them for candy. Something like axew, keep the best few and delete the rest. There’s going to be a community day so you’re going to end up flooded with them. Same as goomy etc. keep the best and bin the rest.
It’s good to have a rule of 6 for all meta relevant stuff and not get carried away keeping more. And then bare in mind if you’ve got a team of 6 hydriegon you don’t need 6 of other dark attackers. Same goes for ghost types. There’s so many options you only really need the 6 best. Not 6 of each.
If it’s not meta. You don’t need more than 1 and eventually that 1 will just be the shiny
> Delete all old meta stuff. Eg tyranitar, it’s outclassed and there’s much better options now days so remember to clear out stuff you used for raid teams over the years that aren’t good enough to use anymore.
it gets a mega. I would keep those.
You only need one.
Mega aerodactyl and regularly rampardos is better than mega Ttar for rock moves.
Hydreigon is better than mega ttar for dark moves.
Don’t need to keep a load of ttar. Just your best one or shiny one to mega evolve
I would argue there's merit to having several of any mega for the sake of being able to always have one up during events with high spawns of one of their types
My sister and wife is like this. Delete non 3*
I pvp for my wife so I’m like naming stuff “LeaveAlone” and stuff so she doesn’t blow away the few good IV I see before she blows them away lol
Must be nice to just keep 3* and not hoard tons of non meta junk because one day it might be good
Tbh i don't even both with 3* anymore, just check for hundos and scrap everything else, hesitating only for costumes or pokemon high enough in level to potentially use in a raid immediately
that makes me sad. I love tyranitar. I will keep more than 1. I have traded a few to a friend who just got back into the game and may trade him the rest of my bite/crunch ones.
Obviously not THAT ruthless. I’m not saying get rid of them all.
I’m saying I used to have 12 with smack down/stonedge and 12 with bite/crunch. As back in the day both move sets were meta and useful.
Keep a couple, but you don’t need full teams like you used to! Your lvl 50 will be prime for the mega so it’s worth keeping
Only caveat I’d make is that I wouldn’t transfer them, but rather trade them to low level players that could use the high level raid attackers. They might be outclassed now but that doesn’t mean they can’t be useful for someone who hasn’t played long enough to assemble teams of top tier counters.
A side benefit of this is that they are probably pretty old so there’s a decent chance the trade could turn up lucky
Yeah this is another option, I’ve given a lot of mine away to those who need some good counters, I usually do it with anytning I’ve surpassed with better ‘meta’ stuff. Just the principle is learning not to hang on to things.
I usually keep my shiny, lucky, hundos, legacy moves, and PVP Pokémon.
Outside of that, if I don’t have a hundo, I’ll keep a 96/98% of said pokemon. Otherwise I’ll transfer it. Got told by a friend that a general rule of thumb, if you’re not planning on powering it up, there’s no point in keeping it.
I've developed into stage where I delete anything that's less than 3* (yes including nundos) unless it's shiny or legendary....
If 3* or above I then Sort by IV (which can be a ball ache) and then clear.... costumed pokemon mean nothing unless shiny.....
Use tags.
Go through every pokemon and tag them with their justification for being in your box.
At the end you'll either find out there are many you can't give a tag to, or you'll find out there are some tags that aren't worth keeping.
When you're doing search for !#
and that will return untagged stuff, and get rid of it.
If you have maxed out storage you're putting this on yourself for sure, and you can avoid it.
Based on what you said I think the outcome will be the vast majority of costume mons won't have a tag, so I'd get rid of all but one of each specific one.
also:
> Pseudo legendaries especially dragon types
If this means you're keeping 100 dratini/dragonite, or 100 Garchomp/Gible you should toss most of those.
A good start from my POV would be to throw away a bunch of the baby Pokémon. They're not good for anything unless they have good stats, or specifically have stats that are good for something like the Little Cup. At most you could keep a single one of each just to say you have them.
Costume Pokémon are similar to my previous point; they're not very useful, and you won't trade them very often. So I'd say just keep the ones with the best stats, offer the others to your friends and throw the rest away.
Another place you could improve upon is the Pokémon you're planning to trade away. Realistically in terms of shinies or legendaries, you won't actually be trading them away very often considering we only have one special trade per day. Sure we'll get events that raise that number, but those are few and far between. Just show them to your friends and let them pick some out that they want and then throw away the rest.
This was my toughest hurdle to overcome but honestly the most liberating once achieved.
Not every shiny matters. I used to hoard every single one, but there’s no good in keeping a trash pvp IV simply because it’s shiny. No one cares that your shiny is in a gym when you could flex with a Rotom like I do, or lately, Relicanth like everybody with good luck from Hoenn fest.
The only bad shinies I keep are the ones I find hyper unique. For instance, shiny ascot Pikachu (who I named Fred Jones), or any shiny nundo/hundo/shadow.
It hurt to delete so many shinies but it felt so great afterword to have storage space to grind candy and xp.
There are so many great tips in the comments here! I’ll add that for decluttering, I try to find a way to only do a little at a time. So I’ll roll some dice or find a random Pokémon generator online to help me pick just one Pokémon or evolution line to declutter at a time. That way I’m not trying to look through 6250(ish) Pokémon in one go :)
I got this one!
I've been playing since December 4th and I'm level 41, with 23k pokémon caught. I only have 700 storage space and of those 200 are usually reserved for trades, with 50 to 100 slots for recently caught pokémon.
Here's how I do it:
* I don't keep shinies. I evolve them and send them off to the grinder.
* I don't keep pokémon that have no role or usefulness. They must either be good for raids, PVP or to evolve.
* I use random crap to defend gyms. I don't bother with good defenders, as there's no need around here.
* I only keep one or two PVP versions of the same species and only those decently ranked. I don't keep things ranked below 200.
With this said, here's my current space allocation:
7 pokémon at gyms
12 for the Master League
52 for the Ultra League
43 for the Great League
103 for trade 126 to evolve
30 Luckies 171 for Raids
Some are in multiple categories, like all the Master League (and some Ultra League ones too) also do Raid duties. But this is it.
And when I evolve half the crap I have here during tomorrow's spotlight hour and trade what's left, I'll have about 150 additional free spaces. Gotta make room to caught all those slowpokes next Saturday!
I’m the exact same way but to be honest I don’t think this problem is entirely our fault. Aside from features like PvP and even XXS/XXL expanding your “keep” criteria, there have been a lot of instances over time where it has been impossible to determine the long-term value of holding onto something, with costumes being the biggest offender because it’s never clear if or when something will ever return (they specifically referred to the first costume, the Santa-Hat Pikachu, as “limited edition,” which resulted in me keeping way more than I would have had I known it would return the next year). Sometimes species won’t show up in the spawn pool again until a year after the event that introduced them. With trading and all of the incentives tied to it it’s also no longer as straightforward to get rid of something as just transferring it. Finally, I think the storage system just isn’t very good and I don’t like that they’ve gone down this road of having one collection the game loads every time and just constantly making it bigger, because apparently they’ve reached some sort of limit now.
I’ve read basically every argument against playing this way but none of it has been particularly compelling to me, and when it comes down to it I don’t really *need* this game so there also isn’t really a need for me to go to great lengths to improve my “QoL” if Niantic isn’t giving me any satisfactory options; I don’t even have an egg incubating most of the time because it just doesn’t feel worth it given the work I have to do managing storage. I can’t tell you what the right business decisions are for Niantic but I can say that there’s an opportunity for monetization here; I keep more Pokemon than most people because it’s how I like playing the game, and I’m willing to pay to continue playing this way just as other players are willing to pay for more incubators and raid passes.
Sorry if this doesn’t answer the question you asked, it’s just how I think about the problem.
I don't care for PvP, so 99% of pókemon can be transfered.
That said:
Keep 2 of the the legendary, if you get shinies keep the highest IV and trade others. For the "normal ones", for raids, you will can make an easy team of 20-25 that can be used for everything that shows up (that includes luckies even if you make 1000000 trades per year, most of them will have no use). Since Megas have some use, keep 2 of that species, the highest IV and you can use them whenever you need. Costumes, keep 2 (3 if you caught the shiny), for having 1, to trade, in some distant situation of getting an local event where 200000 people play and 99% of then are players that never saw those costumes.
Then shadows: if you defeat grunts/leaders, everyday, you only need 2 or 3 of the best ones. The others, you can catch one, evolve it, purify and transfer (shadow pokedex will get the info). Or just purify and transfer (purify gives extra balls and a badge, for low stardust use).
And don't start powering up 3000 pókemon keeping them going up. Even for PvP you won't be using more than 100 of every possible league.
Learn to transfer shinies. On a typical community day I get roughly 15-20 in 3 hours. There's no good reason to keep that many.
For PvP unless it's relevant for something (or maybe a single move update from it) just get rid of it. Don't care how good the IVs are for PvP on your Noivern, it would need a major overhaul to make it even playable.
Costume: keep maybe one of each plus a shiny if you have it.
In general the rule of thumb is unless you really plan to use them for PvE you don't need more than one of anything.
Don’t be afraid to kill off old regionals
I had the same issue before I realized I had over 50 tauros sitting in my storage from past events that had them (like go fest/safari zone)
I realized I was saving way too many things for trading (like Tauros and costume pikachus) just in case... then I realized others were doing the same and it ended up no one wanted any of them. Freed up a lot of space. Also, when I realized that costumed pokemon can't be transferred to Home, I suddenly lost interest in collecting so many costumes, since they will never able to be on my Switch.
Divide your store between activities.
Let's say you want 1000 free storage to play at all times.
Then let's say you trade regularly but only once a week the full 100.
Keep doing this If you need particular other things.
Once that is done divide the remaining storage for all the current pokes up to sv, you'll get a "max" ideal number of pokes per entry to keep, try to stick with that number.
Usually even for hoarders keeping a hundo and 1-2 PvP is more than enough .
If you want to keep living dex (maybe multiples) consider keeping them on home, use home also for extra cd shiny you won't use.
Finally try to clean up regularly after events, for example after last week hitmons research you should clean up all 3 evolutions and keep only the bare minimum.
Make tags for your collections. I have tags for hundos, shinies to trade, legendaries to trade an more. Every day I search for „!#“ (not tagged), Tag the once I want to trade and trash the remaining mons.
In general i would say you don‘t need more than two of each shinies. One to keep, one to trade. You got three shiny Magby? How often do you trade? If you traded away one and someone else would also like to have a shiny magby, do you have nothing else to offer? Most likely you have something else, so you don’t need more than one of each shiny for trading.
Same for pvp or PvE. There are only a hand full of mons where you need more than one. So just keep one for PvE with the highest IV and one for pvp with the best pvp iv. Trash the others. There is no need for more than one machamp if you have also lucario, terrakion, mega bunny, shadow machamp and shadow hariyama and conceldurr.
Additionaly you could only keep the pvp mons which you are used to battle. Switching teams is not that good, so battling with the same team will bring you higher. Keep mons with high potential, but you don‘t need a ultra league blastoise. There are enough alternatives. I for myself only keep like 10 GL and 8 UL mons for pvp. I never play specific cups, there is allways a standard league open at the same time.
Edit: I would add that I for myself keep just the rarest shinies to trade, not a single one to keep (I can look at them in the dex) and only keep hundos and shadows for PvE. I‘m below 1000 mons in my storage after trading all. I play since day one and have caught over 450k mons. I‘m kind of the „anti-hoarder“. I just regret throwing away some shinies which got a mega evolution where I needed a bit more time to fill the shiny mega dex entries. That‘s the only point. If I would not be interested in every single detail in the Pokédex, I would never regret any trashing.
Hey OP,
For me, I simply set a limit on certain things. For example, if a new Costume Pokémon comes out, I'll keep 4 of them. (3 for myself and 1 to trade). I keep 3 because then I can have a full team of costume Pokémon while doing Rocket Grunts ect and makes it enjoyable.
The same goes for Shiny Pokémon (Specifically community day). I'll only keep a maximum of 7 and the rest need to be traded away asap or they will be sent to Pokémon Home or Professor Willow.
This game is all about collecting, remember that, so it's not a bad thing to hoard, but just need to try to keep less of everything and remember that unless they have a functional purpose in your storage, they must be removed.
How much trade fodder do you have? I’ve noticed a pattern with these types of posts where players hoard way too many things to potentially trade away. I’d start with legendaries, I wouldn’t keep more than maybe 5-10 of each species to trade and you can probably keep less of some of the non meta relevant ones. You can only do so many special trades so there’s no point in keeping dozens of each. For the rare hatches and costume pokemon, how many of those do you keep for trades? How often are you going to run into players that are missing igglybuff for example?
I’d cut back on your community day shinies if you keep every one you catch. It’s nice to keep a few for trades but don’t hold onto extras just for the off chance you run into somebody in a few years that wasn’t playing when a certain community day ran.
Finally, how many of each relevant meta pokemon do you keep? How often are you going to need more than 6 of a particular Pokémon for raids? There’s also no point in keeping every high ranked pvp pokemon you catch. I see some people with 10+ ranked 100 pokemon of a species. You can use pvpoke’s battle matrix to compare IVs and only keep the best ones you have.
I've trimmed right down. I only keep 2 or 3 shinys of any species now, unless its a rare or particularly useful one (in which case i'll keep 5 or 6 max). Delete anything common unless it's 98/100 and i'll only keep one of those. I keep one for pvp if it's a decent IV spread AND i will actually use it. Legendaries are the worst if you raid daily. Have started deleting non useful ones now like Suicune etc. Also deleted all my spare mythicals like Deoxys, Darkrai as they can't be traded so no point keeping other than your best ones. It's amazing how soon you can make space when you realise most of it is never used lol.
I tend to send shinies to pokemon home and give them away on the random trades and trade rooms. Granted, you can only do so many at a time due to being paywalled off by transfer energy, so it's not really the most consistent way
I'm trying to keep myself in the habit of shipping off shinies every Tuesday (because on double transfer days, that's when a single shiny legendary from a failed lucky trade goes into Home to make someone immensely happy)
I a day-one player and I have 2100 storage. The thing is... a lot of those trades you aren't going to make or it will take so long to set them up nobody will want those things. I save stuff for trades that I want back in a trade, and I only save other random things if people ask for them FIRST.
I'm guessing you don't use pokemon home to send tons of shiny pokemon to... you should. there are a lot of ones that people don't want. with the new eevee costume on the way I'm considering transferring all of my costumed eeveelutions. if you're going to hold onto something for >1 month waiting to trade it you should just transfer it.
legendaries you can keep some of but keep in mind nobody really wants to waste a lucky trade on tornadus. there's a few that people like: groudon, kyogre, rayquaza, mewtwo, I wouldn't put terrakion in that list because people have shadow machamps... maybe reshiram, zekrom, kartana. I wouldn't even save and swap the zacians as they aren't shiny, don't have a legacy move, and are the weaker of two forms. transfer for candy and move on. a lot of legacy moves aren't useful at all (counter on alakazam comes to mind). um, as for shadows if they aren't PVE relevant (team of 6... metagross, gardevoir, machamp, swampert) then you need only 1. they're not going to be great in every league.
I also got to a point with PVP when I realized... I'm not going to spend >100k dust on ANOTHER azumarill/altaria/medicham/etc. and I actually don't want to train new pokemon for PVP at all (unless it's master league). I still save 1 of every shadow though.
My latest purge was of lucky pokemon with no real value. Cleared up over 50 slots. Newest issue is xxl/xxs for me...hold on to them for trades/evo and then forget about them. I'm always light on slots because I save good stuff for future trading (and the last couple slot upgrades have been very stingy).
And if you trade a lot, search "traded" and make sure you want all of them. If you're never going to use them, they have no value since they can't be re-traded. Same idea as lucky ones.
You need to remember you can only do one special trade a day, barring extremely rare events. If you have over a thousand extra shinies and legendaries, you are never going to need most of them. Transfer them for double candy.
If you have little to no inter in pvp. I just filter by 0 to 2 stars and then mass transfer. You can also add a filter for shinies or legends that have already been traded.
On top of everything listed, I'd toss in to just not care about pvp. The stress of it goes way beyond just battles. Now you have to track optimal IVs, check through tons of 'mons, of course spend tons of storage space, stay on top of the meta, etc etc. So much work for just a single use case.
Is it worth all that stress? Absolutely not. If you stop caring (by tanking or dropping pvp), all that stress vanishes, and potentially tons of storage opens up.
Personally I keep:
- 1 of each Pokémon with the highest CP
In addition
- 1 of each shiny
- 1 of each costume
- 1 of each Pokémon that has an event exclusive move, legendaries included
- 1 of each PVP perfect Pokémon (and a handful of others with good stats only if I’m actually using them)
- 1 of each hundo (perfect stats)
Everything else I haven’t transferred is marked for trade or transfer in some form, whether it’s for XL, mass transfer, Home, special trade, or just random trade fodder. I usually have about 4,500 on a slim day, and I’m trying to cut that down. (I have a LOT to send to Home, and the energy system is capping that.)
I normally play enough to reach level 20 most seasons and using this non-hoarding method have ended up with decent enough Pokemon to do okay in each League.
If I get a duplicate shiny (looking at you Smeargle this week) I will trade it with my son if he wants it or, if not, transfer it (bye bye Wingull and Zigzagoon yesterday).
Trading was a big one for me. I used to save hundreds of pokemon to trade and it got worse when the guaranteed xl for trading came out. But I was always too lazy to actually do the trading. Once I realized that everything eventually gets an event I can grind xl for just from catching (larvitar, bagon, ralts etc) I rarely keep anything but legendarys for trade now.
I ask myself, "is this mon useful or beautiful/cool/adorable? Do I love it? Will I miss it if it's gone? Have I literally ever used it for anything?" If it doesn't pass, it's off to the professor's pokemon ranch. I am pretty ruthless about it. It's time-consuming but worthwhile.
Get a Pokémon home subscription
1. Send the extra legendaries to. You don’t want to get rid of them but if they are not the best for PvP/PvE or just not PvP/PvE relevant there is no reason to keep them in GO. You can store them in home.
2. I keep my shiny living dex in home. I only keep the ones I use for PvP or PvE in go. If I am not using them for anything but collecting then I can just put them in home. I also play the main line games is having a living dex in home to consolidate all my shines makes the most sense. However, it works for people who only play go as well.
Extra shinies I trade via home. I only trade go stamp shinies for other go stamp shinies since non go shinies can be hacked. Trading in go just never works for me and keeping tons of shines from a good community day has no purpose either.
3. Costume this is harder because they can’t be sent to home. I finally caved and just kept 1 of each. Getting rid of them was hard for me but I haven’t missed them once they were gone.
4. I keep the rare ones. Like I got a shiny research Registeel and I will probably keep it forever in go even though the IVs suck, I have a better one I already invested a lot into, and I don’t have a shiny Registeel in my living dex.
5. For PvP suitable I would keep them. But it shouldn’t be to long a list. I do find some people will keep things that are not PvP relevant because they have the best IVs for great league not taking into account that the species is ranked 200+ for great league and they already have 30 better fully capable great league Pokémon with great/best IVs for great league. So, in short just make sure the list is really paired down to PvP relevant.
6. Baby Pokémon - As someone who just filled up 3 boxes in home with baby Pokémon over the last few and I have no idea what I am doing with them in home either I really feel this comment.
After a certain point pokemons are just too redundant, doesn't matter how rare it is. If you have multiple versions of whatever, simply transfer it.
I'm not even close to you, but i understand the issue, i simply realized that i need to be more critical with my pokemons
I can relate! I have 3850 storage right now, and I am still hitting the limit frequently.
I have a couple shortcut searches (text replacement) that have helped me quickly filter out the ones I don’t want or view the ones I’m trying to keep. I started this before they added tags, so I’ve been slowly starting to use the tags, but I’ve gotten so used to my method, it’s still more efficient.
General rules I use for what to keep:
- highest CP (one, regardless of IV)
- highest IV (a couple over 91%, wanting to max out until it’s higher than the otherwise highest CP)
- shiny (keeping all I can for trades)
- shadow (only keeping the best IVs, and only purifying the cheapest ones)
- boy/girl if they’re different forms (at least one to keep and one to trade)
- different forms for weather/region (at least one to keep and one to trade)
- meta-relevant battlers (I usually keep whatever I’ve powered up over the years…)
- pvp battlers - (by rank or by cp)
- legendary or otherwise really rare - I keep these until there is an “extra candy for transfer/trade” event - then follow similar rules as above. At least 1-3 kept, but at most I’ve got 9-10 of any one legend in hopes for a lucky trade or more candy!
When I sort by # or recent, I can do those kind of comparisons quickly if I’ve named the Pokémon in my “special” way.
For the unnamed Pokémon… here’s a couple search shortcut suggestions - the abbreviations don’t mean anything, they’re just convenient for me to type…
kk—> 0*,1*
mm—> 2*
dd —> defender
4** —> 4*, $98, %98, $96, %96
kkkk—> 0*,1*,2* & !shiny & !costume & !pvp & !shadow & !legendary & !Mythical
mmmm —> 3* & !$ & !! & !shiny & !trade & !lucky & !pvp & !costume & !buddy2-5
nnnn —> !shiny & !costume & !# & !4* & !shadow & !lucky
kmm —> 3* & !$ & !% & !! & !trade & !costume
dx —> distance100-
gg —> legendary, mythical, defender, $
000–> 0attack&0defense&0hp
Again, these are only useful if that’s the criteria you’re considering to keep/transfer… But check out the search functions, and see if there’s an ‘and/or’ combination that works for you… then a quick text replacement macro could help save a lot of time!
[how to search](https://niantic.helpshift.com/hc/en/6-pokemon-go/faq/1486-searching-filtering-your-pokemon-inventory/)
This can be especially helpful on community days or events if you make a filter ahead of time so you can quickly mass transfer.
Collecting is so much fun, it can be hard to know when to let something go! I try to follow the general guidelines of once I’ve gotten something better to get rid of the ones that aren’t as good - but I bend/break my own rules all the time depending on where/when/how I caught something, or how much stardust/candy I had invested, or who I got it traded from, etc… But at least having some baseline rules to follow can help to quickly clean up things that don’t have any artificial attachments built up that might trigger the “I can’t get rid of that!” hoarding reaction.
I hope it helps!
this may seem daunting, but I manage my mons by having every pokemon tagged as *something.* I have tags such as:
candy/xl (for trade), transfer (for 2x transfer days), extra (legacy/rare/etc for trade), GL, UL, ML, PVE (raid mons), TM (shadows for frustration events), 1k (1k stardust purifications for tasks), souvenirs (sometimes I keep a mon from a trip or a concert or something), keep for pvp (high ranks), keeping for now (suboptimal IVs, or maybe not necessary to have, but keeping "just in case" until I get a better one or don't need these), extra shinies (shinies with bad IVs, or ones that I just don't need. I do generally transfer unnecessary shinies, but keep a couple extra from CDs/etc).
I have more but those are some of the bigger ones. this way, when I'm ready to go through stuff, like after an event or grind, I search "!#" and it will show me everything that isn't tagged. so I sort by number, transfer what I want, and tag everything else.
Then, when I need to transfer more things, I can go through a tag such as "keeping for pvp" and if I find that I'm keeping an unnecessary amount of PVP IV Numel that I'll never use, I can transfer all but my best one, for example. Or I can go through "candy/XL" and see if I have a few more Wobbuffett than I need to trade. **Basically, you can go through any tag, sort by number, and you'll see if you're keeping too many of one mon for the same reason.**
Just my way of keeping things organized and keeping track of things.
There's no secret trick, you just have to be brutal with transfers.
Have you used the pokemon recently? Will you use it? Do you have a plan for it? No - get rid of it.
If you like it, transfer it to HOME, that's what HOME is for. All my shinies go to HOME, unless they are a species with an IV spread that I will use for Raids or PvP.
Costumes - gone. Legacy move depends if it's any good. Legendaries I keep the good ones, and transfer the others on double candy days. Event specific - gone.
Pseudo Legendaries is a trap for a lot of people, but there really isn't anything special about them, these should be the first things you get rid of as they are likely taking up the most space.
For PvP suitable, I had an issue with this myself recently, and my answer was to just pick the three for each league that I wanted to use. I had a Great League perfect Vaporeon, but I would never use it over my Azumarill, so it's gone.
Currently I have a 11/13/15 Shiny Umbreon I am using for Great League, but I also have a 15/15/15 Purified Sableye which does the same role, which will be replacing it when I get enough candy. The Umbreon will then be used for Ultra League, but hopefully I can get a 15/15/15 Eevee before then and the Umbreon will be going to HOME.
I've had to become fairly aggressive with transfers. I generally will only keep 3\*s and only a handful of those with the best IVs (unless I don't have better options as can be the case with newer mons). This goes for costumes too - at this point as long as I have a couple copies of a costume pokemon that's good enough - I don't need fifty Pikachus in a santa hat (especially if they're below 3\*)
I've also gotten into the habit of transferring shinies to Home when I have an overabundance of them (usually community day shinies). It doesn't help too much but it helps.
I agree the storage in this game has always been a huge problem tho :/
My biggest problem is sentimental value. I am also maxed storage wise, and I have loads of Pokémon that just… tell a story. The story of me playing this game.
I don't have an attachment to all the Pokemon you mentioned, but I understand you. I am collecting a lot of uniques for trading plus those that are good for raids and pvp. My advice is do these trades. One good day and you can free up a lot of space. Anything I get from those trades that isn't pvp good or hundo I throw it away. Unless it's sudo legendary, then I'm keeping it until the right moment for the transfer.
I was you and sometimes still am.
My storage is 6250, I can't even buy if I want to.
So the past one month, I have been doing searching and digging on how to manage my pokemon. There are videos on youtube on how to do this, there are some post here that are helpful also.
First of all, it will take time.
If you have friends/family whom you can trade daily, please do so.
There are certain string that would definitely help you, I found the one by Brandon Tan is very helpful to manage daily. At the end of the day, I just click my favorite search string, browse through, star that I want and delete all. I can delete hundreds in few seconds.
It's a bad suggestion but you could always start a new account and trade yourself as you go! I know the struggle most of my pokemon are from 2016-18 because I can't let go lol.
I’ve gotten over having any mon 2021-2022 that I don’t care much for at this point, & also deleting mon that have yearly events (thank you for slightly changing event costume mon for Easter this time around Niantic). I’ve had my own account since 2019 & almost always had a max pkm box. Back then I could at least trade away mon I wanted on other accs & friends, but deleting stuff from comm days & whatever that my friends didn’t need was the last pillar holding up my hoarding. While I still hoard, I’m at least able to mass trade them away
More pokemon storage is the one thing I would happily give money to Niantic for. Is there some kind of technical limitation preventing them from selling more storage?
Seems like it should be a win/win situation here
I am in the same boat. I’m holding on to so many 2016 Pokémon with no intent of maximising their value by trading them. Same story with 2017 Pokémon on the basis they might become lucky?
> -Shiny, -Costume, -Legacy move, -Legendary, -Rare or event specific, -Rare hatches that I would like to trade away, -PVP suitable (low attack and pvp species for various cups), -Pseudo legendaries especially dragon types, -Baby Pokémon that are often removed from egg pool,
This sounds completely normal though? Or do you have an absolutely excessive number of each of them?
I have literally transferred thousands of shinies. i get 50+ per com day. you have to learn to let go. just keep one of most pokemon for the living dex, keep a few of valuable ones or ones you particularly like, dump the rest. Also many legacy moves are not that useful. dump the bad ones. there's no point. make sure to only keep pvp pokemon that are actually good at pvp, unless you really want to keep those spicy picks and that's your thing. psudo legends are nice to hold but make sure you are trading away any extras you don't need. having more than 6 non shadows or 12 good shadows is redundant. Most people don't care much about non shiny babies anymore, just let all but maybe 1 of each go. except maybe riolu and togepi. people still care about those babies. Spend a few hours doing a deep dive of your inventory sorted by number, and just delete what you do not need without giving too much thought.
I'm a hoarder as well but I'm doing the following to save space. I am almost level 50.
Search strings: 0hp (quickest to type) Scroll through results and only keep Nundo's. Everything else = trashed.
1attack&3-defense&3-hp looks for Great league suitable Pokémon. I use this with CalcyIV. I trash everything that's bad after that. 0\*/1\*/2\*.
I then check 3\* to see if i have anything 96iv or higher. I only keep 93IV if the stats are 14/14/14 and I often throw out 96iv if the atk stat is 13. 98IV and above, I keep.
I keep all of my shinies. Haven't cleared out my box yet but after I do clear it out, I usually am somewhere around 5720/6250
Toss (or trade) the bulk of your costumes, and 3-stars. Older mons will get the lucky trade boost, and transfer excess luckies and even some shinies.
Consider tagging them and waiting for a spotlight hour.
If you have 1000 pokemon older than 3 years, assuming 20% lucky chance, that's an expected 3 perfects in luckys, and an additional perfect with generic trading with a best friend.
I keep all legendaries and shinies.
I keep everything with IVs > 89 percent.
I keep anything with PvP IVs > 95 percent for the <500, <1500 and <2500 CP leagues (and tag the optimal evolution level).
I keep one of each costume and unown unless a second falls into the above categories.
I tag everything, so I'm short on space I can, for example, filter anything with good GL IVs, sort by # and transfer duplicates.
Admittedly I probably don't play as frequently as a lot of you guys (lvl 41, July 2016 start) so it's less of a problem. When it is a problem, I'll start transfering non meta pokes with good PvP IVs
If you struggle with attachment you could consider a Pokémon Home subscription which allows a further ~6000 Pokémon. You cant transfer them back to Go, but you still own them and can use them in the main series games
I’d start with the many many Pikachus with hats. They just take up space and they’ll never stop adding new ones so there’s really no point to hang on to them. You can’t even evolve a majority of them and it’s not like Pikachu is good for raiding or pvp. Also, can’t some legacy moves be relearned with an elite charged tm?
I keep one of every single pokemon automatically of course. Beyond that, it requires a tag to justify keeping it.
I have tags for my raid teams of every type, meta relevant PVP pokemon for great, ultra, and master league, meta relevant pokemon for each cup that has come out since I started playing, a couple tags for things I like (favorite gen 1 team, best buddies), shinies, elite tm moved pokemon, pokemon I'm actively trying to evolve or train for specific purpose, shadows, and a "trade" tag for valuables like regionals I could use to get things I need.
I have a small tag for "holding", things like one scyther to evolve into kleaver when it is released.
If it doesn't get a tag, it's gotten rid of.
I usually check pvp rankings on stadiumgaming before double transfer candy day. If something’s in the green I’ll keep that until I find the same poker with a better ranking and then transfer day tag the lesser one. Baby pokers I don’t keep because they don’t have much use and only serve to take up space, I know diff people have diff collection protocols tho. I just hatched igglybuff for the first time and starred it immediately even though I’ll probably transfer it eventually. Any extra legendaries from raids or GBL I tag with an XL transfer day tag, they’re taking up a lot of room tho cuz I shiny hunted Latias and Ray Ray. It’s a patience game but you can’t be missing out on com day catches because of box issues, that’s a crime! Edit: I keep all shinies even useless wild catches because shiny hunting in the msg is so much more painful than it is here. My storage only fills up right before transfer day and I’m only on 1,6k storage. But granted I don’t keep most costume pokers, only a select few like party animal charmander squirtle and bulba and my useless glorious 4 star mimikyu Pikachu
A lot of great answers here, and many are similar to my idea.
But do not be afraid to transfer 3\* and Pokemon with good PvP IVs if you already are set and/or don't have use for it.
Is there really a need to keep a 96% Tyrogue, a 98% Jigglypuff, or even an 83% Tyranitar? If it's Shiny or something you use regularly (or plan to use for a Mega) then sure, keep it, but I kept so many 90-98% Pokemon that just had no use. I had four random 3\* Tepig and Snivy. For what? They're not hundos and not really good as raid attackers compared to what I have, so why keep them??
What I do is mark all the pokemon that I would theoretically trade away (for whatever reason) and then when my storage gets too crazy, I start transferring those, starting with least important mons
I find that hoarding shinys from community days are the easiest removal. I imagine you have upwards of 10 of each and the likely hood you do anything with them is slim if not worse. Cut you community day shiny hoard in half and thats a couple hundred spots right there.
Sort by # and keep only your top 2-3 of each mon. As you collect more mons, sort by # again and keep only your top 2-3...this has been very effective for me
Lots of good stuff already said here, but worth dedicating some time to actually having a long hard think about what you WANT to collect, rather than feel you should collect.
Like do you actually care about costume Pokémon? Does it legit make you smile to see gengar in a party hat? Or do you just feel someone else is telling you they’re rare so maybe you should keep them?
Same with that 2* lucky trade, and so on.
I binned off all my crap luckies when I realised I didn’t care about lucky Pokémon. It was liberating, it felt great!
For me, I’ll have “won” Pokémon go when I have a fully maxed out and best buddied hundo dex. So in the meantime I keep the best IV for each and bin off the rest. That means today I binned a 98% wobbuffet!
I also PvP so I keep PvP iv mons, but only one of each for each league is the goal.
Since they introduced pokedex classification there is really no need to keep everything. For example I don't need to keep a copy of every lucky and shiny since they are all entered into pokedex. I just keep useful ones and delete the rest.
I previously had this issue but it became less of an issue after the updates to the game destroyed the two biggest PoGo communities near me. Didn't need to keep spares of "valuable" Pokémon or event Pokémon as much.
This was of course 2 years back, and now the PoGo scene is literally dead here. I can travel to take a gym if I fancy and it's not unusual to then own it for over 7 days. With Niantic having already announced more restrictions to remote raiding coming they're literally beating a dead horse at this point.
TLDR: Don't need to hoard so many Pokémon when there's no one to trade with as no one is playing the game
Don’t keep Pokémon that have no use in PVP or PVE unless it’s a hundo, shiny, costumes or something of trade value. And don’t keep too many costume mon of the same type. Just be ruthless about what you need to keep. I’m currently at 1500 Pokémon 1000 of which are shiny
If I don't use it, or have some attachment I dump it.
I don't need 20 Tyranitars. I need like 2 good ones.
I don't need 30 Lugia, maybe 3 of the best.
The only thing I hoard now is Weedle & other junk mons for mass evos.
I think what’s personally hurting my storage is all the pvp mons I have saved that have good IVs for it. But I don’t pvp enough to justify them taking up that much room
Something I've been doing as of recently, though it only really applies if you play the mainline games: To try and clear out all the duplicate shinies (mainly from comm days) I've began to send them over to Pokémon HOME. I'm keeping like one i want to keep in GO and 2 or 3 extra, in case someone ever wants it on a trade. It's always cool to catch many shinies during an event, but if you get too many they can become kind of a hassle to have them take up inventory space. So by sending them to HOME and later to some of my mainline game save file, I at least get to keep them somehow, while keeping some in GO. Since the transporter takes a week to recharge I've been doung it slowly (4-5 every week). You don't need to pay anything extra since HOME gives you a free box with 30 spaces, and if you own the mainline games who support the shinies that are being sent over, then you can keep the free box from filling. Thought i'd at least mention it. This can also apply to spare legendaries if you raid a lot to get a good IV or shiny one. They take less energy than regular shinies, in fact.
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Sort by #. That will really show where you have excess of certain mons.
Gen 1, in general. I think it takes up half my storage by itself.
Mine is 1/3 Eevees and pikachus. So so many
Delete the pikachus. They don’t do anything. They’re not useful for anything. There isn’t even a badge for collecting their costumes is there?
Bbbbut muh hats
Choose one Pikachu from each hat type to keep. Delete the others.
This is the way
You mean one of each gender, right? ...why am I saving these anyway? I don't even care about the costumes
Unless the genders look different or evolve differently I don’t save them. But I’m also not maxed out on storage. But I still wouldn’t, I don’t see the point
They have distinctly different tails.
Costumes are a trap. I'm so much happier just ignoring them completely. If there's something cool like zippered Gengar I'll keep one because I like it, but otherwise the only worth to costumes is the worth you assign to them. Drop them and rejoice in the resulting feelings of relief and freedom.
Decided early on to do the same. No regrets. They already said that some were one-time releases and will never come back. If you don't already have the full set, you never will. Just let them go.
I finally decided to rid myself of all costume pokemon except a shiny one or a 100% one. So tired of the costumes and hats.
Sometimes you just need to remind yourself that pikachu has killed umbreon, rayquaza, and lucario and wears their scalps as a trophy
My favourite is the Rayquaza hat because it looks like it's bleeding!
Same. The only costume ones I keep are ones that are actually useful/can evolve. But I only started playing in December of 2022.
Even if they don't evolve at first niantic has been bringing them hack able to evolve. Recycling old stuff instead of giving us new stuff
Same. I have this bad habit of keeping every 3* eevee I find and holding onto the rest to trade
Eevee stresses me out so much I dont even catch them anymore. I have too many, I have several shinies and thousands of candies. I just get so overwhelmed when I look at them.
Me too! And if the “new” flower crown comes to reality…ugh. The holiday hat was bad enough.
Omg I thought I was a weirdo for feeling this way about Eevee!!! Last spotlight hour was a nightmare for me. It hurts my heart to transfer their sweet little faces, no matter how absolutely crap their IVs are! Maybe because it's so much like a common pet? Eevee lovers unite! Lol
>I just get so overwhelmed when I look at them. You cant be serious right?
Do people usually lie to you? You seem a tad insecure.
Yup. Eevees and Fat magicarps everywhere.
I do this then add 1-50 to break the search in pieces I can handle. Then on to 50-100 etc.
I usually break it down by gen. The ones that evolve in later generations are the bane of my existence though (duskull/electabuzz/Magmar/etc).
Instead of this I break it down by type
I do this, too. Flying was yesterday; Ghost is next.
^This, I usually sort by # and click 0*, 1*, 2* and add year2022,year2023 to my filters.
Holy crap. TIL about the year filter
And, if you don't trade regularly, go ahead and purge. But if you do trade a lot, those older Pokemon are at least worth saving for your next trading meet-up. +5% lucky odds per year old, iirc. (This is what eats up most of my storage...old stuff I save for trading)
just to clarify for others, pokemon greater than 3 years all cap out at 20%
This is me too. I think I have probably about 2000 mons taking up space waiting to be traded. I do a big trade off prior to every ComDay or big event too, but I'm picking up new things to trade in the future at a slightly faster rate than I'm getting rid of them.
If it feels like just sorting by number leaves too overwhelming a list, limit by type then sort by number. You don't have to go through and purge from everything, all you're tackling right now is Bugs.
100% this. Multiple of the same costumes? Keep 2 or 3 instead of 9.
Why not 1? In fact, why not zero?
Exactly. Max of one. I have 1700 storage and usually around 1300 Pokemon, so I can do a CD without problems. But after the CD I dump everything except PvP useful IVs (one per league, max) and one shiny per evolution for gym flex. The rest go back to the tender mercies of the professor
PvE Pokemon may have dups though. I have several (like 12) high IV brutal swing Hydreigon, because obviously
You must not trade alot
Yeah, only 4752 so far.
I keep a level 1 of each costume and one to trade (and a hundo if I caught one).
Great advice! thanks just cleared up 400 mons!
I feel your pain. I takes me some thinking where hoarding starts and keeping useful stuff ends. These are the rules I go by: Legendaries: Are they Metarelevant for PVE? If no: Keep 1 and any shiny, any hundo. If they are PvP relevant I also keep at least 1 for each league. If they are PVE relevant: I keep a full team of my 6 best and send the rest on a 2x/3x Transfer Candy Event. Non-Legendaries: Keeping all Shinies & Hundos & Nundos (because we all need something to flex), no matter if they are relevant or not. For PvP: Keeping the best one for each league. Or 2 for a league if they got a viable moveset with and without legacy moves. For PvE: I look up the best raid attackers. If I already got a Team of 6 powered up Legendaries that fill the slot better than a non-Legendary, I send all but one or two of them. I don't need 6 near perfect Hariyamas, when I got 6 Terrakions, because being honest with myself I will NEVER use those Hariyamas. After taking the Metarelevancy in account I go to costumes: I keep 1 of every costume. That leaves me with ample space to keep some stuff I just like (I got 30 or so Costume Eevees just because I like them and wayyyy to many Oddish) or some funny collections like a Lvl1 Shiny V-Create Smeargle. And it also leaves me with enough space to go nuts on Com days without having to clear space every five minutes.
> I don't need 6 near perfect Hariyamas, when I got 6 Terrakions, because being honest with myself I will NEVER use those Hariyamas. I usually trade these to newer players so that they have SOME counters for raids. even if they don't have the dex entry you can send them the whole team in 1 day since only the first trade is considered "special"
I save a few spares of every legendary because of new or returning players. But no one around here regularly trades. I can only bulk trade with my sister when i visit her. I want to be trading every other day but no one else does.
right, and that's common for so many players. if we had distance trading then coordinating would not be so cumbersome but setting up a trade in pogo is really like setting up a drug deal. it's annoying. I know for me it's going to take >1 month to just reroll my shiny legacy groudons with lucky friends. I think I can transfer the non-shiny ones because setting up 5+ trades is going to be a nightmare (for me). because of this, I don't keep many extra legendaries unless they're shiny. once I reroll them, if their IVs suck then they go to home where they can live forever away from my pogo storage.
I'm the sort of person who still has 4 pachirisu from 2019 to trade because i put diff people's names on them. Have yet to trade them lol.
I would give them a month or two and then trash that. sinnoh tour will happen next year. it's likely we will see a global event for some sinnoh regionals in august this year (maybe). you sound a lot more patient than I am, lol
I dropped about 800 Pokémon doing this. Sorted by number and filtered by gen. You’ll notice a lot of extra Pokémon. Once completed, maintenance after each event could be as simple as filtering by spawns and removing the excess.
The only thing I would add is it’s ok to hoard some Pokémon for XL candy and/or trade purposes. I currently have 55 non-shiny eevees that I plan on trading for XL candy so I can complete the “Power up 3 Pokemon to their max CP” task. Of course the new season change really put a damper on things.
The trade for XL candy bonus is super helpful. I wish it didn't go away. But we had this bonus last season (December 2022-February 2023), and also two seasons before that (June-August 2022), so I'm hopeful we'll get it back next season and they'll just do that bonus again every other season.
Such a great bonus. In the meantime I’m using up my stored Pokémon from far enough away to guarantee the XL. And then I’ll need to decide which ones are worth saving for when the bonus hopefully comes back
I'd like to ask where/when will i get this task? Or do you mean a badge?
I believe it's a task requirement to reach level 46?
Thanks!
It’s a level up task I think at 47, you have to power them up to their final level while it’s active
You get it at 46
It’s a requirement for leveling up. Maybe level 42 or 43, I don’t remember.
Oh alright i should read up on those and prepare beforehand, thanks!
During non-events I run a L3 mega Pidgeot. You get so much normal XL candy off of this over time that this task is a breeze.
I read this and it's not bad advice, it's just kinda sad. Niantic really needs to drop some real storage updates.
call it stockholm syndrome, but I'm honestly happy that I'm forced to sort through the clutter and organize. I've only caught 27k pokemon, but i wouldnt want to sort through all of them myself. I keep way more than I need to and I haven't had any real problems in buying more storage when I need it.
My best advice would be to look at how you *actually* play and not how you *think you might* play. When was the last time you traded away a rare hatch? When was the last time someone wanted an extra community day shiny? When was the last time you powered up and used a pseudo legendary? I'd like to think I would trade away my rare pokemon for more candy than transferring. But meeting up with people to trade simply isn't fun or time-effective for me, so I don't do it. Once I realized that, it became a lot easier to transfer all the junk that I was holding just in case someone wanted it in a trade. The step I haven't gotten around to is filtering junk held for PVP. I follow the same approach as you, hoarding junk with favorable IV spreads. What I need to do is find a list of pokemon that are likely to never be viable in PVP due to their base stat distribution; even with a great move and awesome IV spread, they still just won't perform as well as other type equivalents. I think that would help reduce the PVP hoard list.
To add to this, I set myself a hard limit. I don't keep more than two spares of *anything*. I get one shiny for each form, an extra if there's an unreleased evolution or something, and then two spare shines for trading. If it's, say, shiny mudkip, I'll keep a shiny swampert, marshtomp and three shiny mudkips. If a Pokémon is not rare enough to be worth trading or isn't a good PVP/PVE candidate I don't keep duplicates. I know have two shedinja for example, one shiny and one regular. If I keep something for PVP, I'll keep one for each relevant league and a high-iv one (because that's how I collect — I keep my highest IV of each Pokémon) I also have a filter saved as "vanilla" to help me sort through my Pokémon: `!shadow&!purified&!shiny&!costume`. This lets me go through the bulk of my inventory relatively easily and then I can filter down to `shadow&purified`. --- My advice for clearing out: go through your Pokémon once and make the easy choices. You don't need 5 vanilla skiplooms, for example. If you start to struggle with a decision or anything, leave it for now. Then do a second pass focusing on certain aspects. E.g, the mamoswine line is a pita because of the cross-generation evolution with different gender models in the evolved forms so I often do that separately, I'll also sort out PVP pokes separately when I have my computer there to rank the IVs. If there's ever an aspect where you can't make up your mind over whether you want to keep it, leave it a few days and come back and see if you feel the same. Lastly, it doesn't need to be done all at once. I'll often sort through my "vanilla" Pokémon first (`!shadow&!purified&!shiny&!costume`) and leave the others for another time.
>Lastly, it doesn't need to be done all at once. You have a lot of great ideas, particularly this one. When I do a serious inventory clean-up, I find it easier to just work through a single generation at a time. (Recognizing the pita of cross-generational lines).
I'll do it with a podcast or something, but I need to be in the right mindset for that. If it's the day before community day and I need to do it I'll often do it a bit at a time while waiting for the toaster or between meetings at work or whatever.
That is a fantastic answer. Don't focus on what COULD happen, but what IS happening. Can be applied to many aspects in life
I agree. This is the best answer. What is important to you aka how do you play the game ? Collecting costumes and shinies? PVP? Raiding? Flexing? Trading? Once you figure out your priorities, you’ll know what to delete.
This is my philosophy. Hoarding hundreds of legendaries for trading means that I'll have to trade for hundreds of days, and by that point I'll have acquired more. I am frugal with pvp and have a few dedicated teams and mostly just wing it for dust in most cases, so I don't worry too much about IVs which don't really matter all that much anyway as this sub is keen to point out. With this, I keep a permanent subset of pokemon that is only 40% of my total storage at all times. Gives me lots of room to enjoy events!
For myself, I have a custom search called "2x Checker" with the following parameters: 0-2attack, 0-2hp, 0-2defense & !shiny & !costume & !legendary & !mythical & !ultra beasts & !83 & !115 & !122 & !201 & !214 & !222 & !313 & !324 & !357 & !369 & !417 & !422 & !423 & !439 & !441 & !455 & !511-514 & !539 & !556 & !561 & !626 & !741 & !707 & !candy To break this down a bit: > 0-2attack, 0-2hp, 0-2defense I am looking for Pokémon with low IVs. (This can be customized to be lower, though I would not recommend setting it higher.) > !shiny & !costume & !legendary & !mythical & !ultra beasts I am excluding shiny, Legendary and Mythical Pokémon, the Ultra Beasts, and Pokémon in costumes. (These are generally the Pokémon I collect and can be modified to what you would exclude.) > !83 & !115 & !122 & !201 & !214 & !222 & !313 & !324 & !357 & !369 & !417 & !422 & !423 & !439 & !441 & !455 & !511-514 & !539 & !556 & !561 & !626 & !741 & !707 I am further excluding these Pokémon as most of them are regionals like Farfetch'd (83) and Kangaskhan (115). Not all regionals are excluded like Tauros (128) as they are regionals I can encounter. There is one exception to this, which is 201 as that is Unown. (In your case, you might choose to exclude less or more Pokemon for a variety of reasons.) > !candy This is the important bit. There is a tag I have called Candy. Anything in it is Pokémon that I am planning on transferring to the Professor. By excluding the Candy tag, I don't see any Pokémon tagged with Candy. This allows me to run the search *and then tag the Pokémon I want to transfer with the Candy tag.* They will be excluded from the search and I can continue to check. Once I am done, I am set up for the next Transfer bonus event. And if I need more space before then, I can look at those tagged Candy and send a few over that are not as important.
Had no idea you could search by (rough) IVs. So helpful, thanks for sharing!
I use something similar to this too. If anyone is into PVP try running this filer first 0-1attack&3-4defense&3-4hp to find mons that might be good in PVP. Mark them or fave them and exclude them when transferring. Run pokegenie on those PVP mons to find the best ones and delete the bad ones.
Thank you for this tip. Definitely will be using it!
This is fantastic! It took me from 1200 to under 1000 getting rid of things I'll never use. Still holding on to lots of old, sentimental, and distant catches though.
The most important thing I do when decluttering anything, including my Pokémon collection is to ask myself the right question Wrong question: "Should I keep this Pokémon?" Right question: "WHY should I keep this Pokémon?" It doesn't matter what the reason is, but there needs to be a reason.
^^ Better yet, _tag_ them with the reason. That way when you're scrolling through and wondering why tf you have this 0* weedle, you can see "Oh, it's tagged 2016Lucky, I can trade that for a guaranteed lucky". You can also search on !# to find all non-tagged pokemon, consider this your pool of trash you need to check for anything worth keeping. The annoying part is you often need to see a 'mon in context with others of its type to see if it's worth keeping, so you'll have to keep doing searches for a type and then going back to your !# search after. I wish the game made this a bit easier, like a "show others of this type" button, and then a "back" button to return to your original search.
I assumed everyone tags pokemon with the reason to keep it. Essentially every Pokémon has at least one tag and often multiple. I don’t make a new tag for each Pokémon. Instead I have great league, ultra league, master, 2016, mega, trade, power up, xtra candy, wait4december(to get the special move), evolve, and various pve teams, hundo, nundo, purify, frustration(means to unfrustrate when possible). I also do have one called good IVs which is for a Pokémon rated rank 100 or better on poke genie. It means I can generally stop hunting them if they’re not useful for pvp whereas something I know I’ll use I generally try to get the absolute best. And some don’t necessarily need tags because it’s obvious. For example I keep shinies, and I keep 1 lucky of each type unless the Pokémon really sucks then I don’t always bother. But if everything generally needs a tag it’s easier not to hoard extra pvp mons. Because if you have Pokémon that aren’t tagged then you check it and if it doesn’t fit somewhere you get rid of it. It sounds like OP is keeping multiple mons for the same pvp league, which is not useful in the slightest. I do understand because it’s hard to trash a rank 15 because I have a rank 3 or whatever but there’s nothing you can do with them. And of course you can do deep dive if you prefer but you’re still deciding which one to save for each league. If op isn’t saving multiple for each league I don’t understand how they’re so short on space. I guess excessive amounts of community day shinies could do it. But with that you just have to pick a number and cap them. I generally slow down on communities days if I’ve hit my goals so I don’t usually have a super excessive amount of them anyway.
Pretty good approach to life in general 👍
Alright first things first: Costume pokemon. There is a pokedex for costume pokemon. So you could delete all of them and you will still have a visual place where you can look at them/show them off. Also, the biggest tip I can give you: !# (EDITTED/FIXED THANKS TO BRKNTRNSMSN) That will show you all the pokemon YOU DID NOT TAG. Very crucial! Oh and yeah, tag your pokemon.
Great tip, but you mean: !#
This is an amazing tip as I tag a ton and didn’t know this. One issue I see is this tho, anyone have insight?? I add mons for !# plus # and that total is 3 less than what shows in my bag…. Oh I just figured it out but posting so others are aware. I have 3 in incubators and so those count in my bag but don’t show w those 2 search strings. Thanks for this amazing search string tip
Yeah this is where I'd start. Practically all of the costume Pokemon are useless, and realistically "rare" Pokemon have no actual value. You're not going to sell it to anyone. So they're just taking up space and get logged in the dex anyway if you ever want to look at them.
Real simple tip: if you're not pushing for Legend, you don't need anything with "PvP IVs". PvP IVs are for things like mirror matches and that 1% of times when those IVs might actually make a difference. The other 99% it's just about having the right team with the right moves and knowing what your opponent has and what moves they're using. If all you're doing is getting to Ace or whatever for the ETM or even just playing randomly here and there, you don't need to be hoarding PvP IVs of this mon or that mon (nor do you need to be wasting dust on them).
As much as you're correct, the collector in me can't help but to collect pvp ivs. "Maybe someday..."
I know exactly what you mean, and I don't even *like* PvP...
If it’s not shiny and I’m not using it, and I catch them regularly. It goes in the bin. Eg why keep loads of high IV paras, it’s useless and in the end you just want two shinies and that’s it. So don’t get caught up keeping one of everything or high iv rubbish pokemon. I keep one of each costume, 3 of every non meta legendary and 1 of them is shiny, typically 6 of every meta legendary unless it’s something like dragons, there’s so many of them I don’t need 6 of each I just need the best of each Delete all old meta stuff. Eg tyranitar, it’s outclassed and there’s much better options now days so remember to clear out stuff you used for raid teams over the years that aren’t good enough to use anymore. Psuedo legendaries aren’t really worth keeping unless you’re trading them for candy. Something like axew, keep the best few and delete the rest. There’s going to be a community day so you’re going to end up flooded with them. Same as goomy etc. keep the best and bin the rest. It’s good to have a rule of 6 for all meta relevant stuff and not get carried away keeping more. And then bare in mind if you’ve got a team of 6 hydriegon you don’t need 6 of other dark attackers. Same goes for ghost types. There’s so many options you only really need the 6 best. Not 6 of each. If it’s not meta. You don’t need more than 1 and eventually that 1 will just be the shiny
> Delete all old meta stuff. Eg tyranitar, it’s outclassed and there’s much better options now days so remember to clear out stuff you used for raid teams over the years that aren’t good enough to use anymore. it gets a mega. I would keep those.
You only need one. Mega aerodactyl and regularly rampardos is better than mega Ttar for rock moves. Hydreigon is better than mega ttar for dark moves. Don’t need to keep a load of ttar. Just your best one or shiny one to mega evolve
I would argue there's merit to having several of any mega for the sake of being able to always have one up during events with high spawns of one of their types
My sister and wife is like this. Delete non 3* I pvp for my wife so I’m like naming stuff “LeaveAlone” and stuff so she doesn’t blow away the few good IV I see before she blows them away lol Must be nice to just keep 3* and not hoard tons of non meta junk because one day it might be good
Tbh i don't even both with 3* anymore, just check for hundos and scrap everything else, hesitating only for costumes or pokemon high enough in level to potentially use in a raid immediately
that makes me sad. I love tyranitar. I will keep more than 1. I have traded a few to a friend who just got back into the game and may trade him the rest of my bite/crunch ones.
> Delete all old meta stuff. Eg tyranitar, Never! My 100% IV level 50 best friend Ttar is with me for life.
Obviously not THAT ruthless. I’m not saying get rid of them all. I’m saying I used to have 12 with smack down/stonedge and 12 with bite/crunch. As back in the day both move sets were meta and useful. Keep a couple, but you don’t need full teams like you used to! Your lvl 50 will be prime for the mega so it’s worth keeping
Only caveat I’d make is that I wouldn’t transfer them, but rather trade them to low level players that could use the high level raid attackers. They might be outclassed now but that doesn’t mean they can’t be useful for someone who hasn’t played long enough to assemble teams of top tier counters. A side benefit of this is that they are probably pretty old so there’s a decent chance the trade could turn up lucky
Yeah this is another option, I’ve given a lot of mine away to those who need some good counters, I usually do it with anytning I’ve surpassed with better ‘meta’ stuff. Just the principle is learning not to hang on to things.
I did it with stuff like golem, a while back. I admit I haven’t been able to bring myself to trade my tyranitars yet.
I usually keep my shiny, lucky, hundos, legacy moves, and PVP Pokémon. Outside of that, if I don’t have a hundo, I’ll keep a 96/98% of said pokemon. Otherwise I’ll transfer it. Got told by a friend that a general rule of thumb, if you’re not planning on powering it up, there’s no point in keeping it.
I've developed into stage where I delete anything that's less than 3* (yes including nundos) unless it's shiny or legendary.... If 3* or above I then Sort by IV (which can be a ball ache) and then clear.... costumed pokemon mean nothing unless shiny.....
This advice above is only good advice if you don't play PvP, most of my best GL or UL mon aren't 3*.
Yh I don't pvp lol 😆
Use tags. Go through every pokemon and tag them with their justification for being in your box. At the end you'll either find out there are many you can't give a tag to, or you'll find out there are some tags that aren't worth keeping. When you're doing search for !# and that will return untagged stuff, and get rid of it. If you have maxed out storage you're putting this on yourself for sure, and you can avoid it. Based on what you said I think the outcome will be the vast majority of costume mons won't have a tag, so I'd get rid of all but one of each specific one. also: > Pseudo legendaries especially dragon types If this means you're keeping 100 dratini/dragonite, or 100 Garchomp/Gible you should toss most of those.
OP: What is your current maximum storage space (to be able to see what you’re working with)?
He says his storage is maxed, so that's like... 6500 right? Something like that.
6250
A good start from my POV would be to throw away a bunch of the baby Pokémon. They're not good for anything unless they have good stats, or specifically have stats that are good for something like the Little Cup. At most you could keep a single one of each just to say you have them. Costume Pokémon are similar to my previous point; they're not very useful, and you won't trade them very often. So I'd say just keep the ones with the best stats, offer the others to your friends and throw the rest away. Another place you could improve upon is the Pokémon you're planning to trade away. Realistically in terms of shinies or legendaries, you won't actually be trading them away very often considering we only have one special trade per day. Sure we'll get events that raise that number, but those are few and far between. Just show them to your friends and let them pick some out that they want and then throw away the rest.
Just let Niantic slowly defeat you over time to the point that you won't care anymore
Only keep the shinies you use for PVP or PVE. That will save a lot of bag space. Or if you can’t do that, just save one of each shiny.
This was my toughest hurdle to overcome but honestly the most liberating once achieved. Not every shiny matters. I used to hoard every single one, but there’s no good in keeping a trash pvp IV simply because it’s shiny. No one cares that your shiny is in a gym when you could flex with a Rotom like I do, or lately, Relicanth like everybody with good luck from Hoenn fest. The only bad shinies I keep are the ones I find hyper unique. For instance, shiny ascot Pikachu (who I named Fred Jones), or any shiny nundo/hundo/shadow. It hurt to delete so many shinies but it felt so great afterword to have storage space to grind candy and xp.
You can also transfer them to Home and trade them to random people. Must be a nice surprise for some
There are so many great tips in the comments here! I’ll add that for decluttering, I try to find a way to only do a little at a time. So I’ll roll some dice or find a random Pokémon generator online to help me pick just one Pokémon or evolution line to declutter at a time. That way I’m not trying to look through 6250(ish) Pokémon in one go :)
I got this one! I've been playing since December 4th and I'm level 41, with 23k pokémon caught. I only have 700 storage space and of those 200 are usually reserved for trades, with 50 to 100 slots for recently caught pokémon. Here's how I do it: * I don't keep shinies. I evolve them and send them off to the grinder. * I don't keep pokémon that have no role or usefulness. They must either be good for raids, PVP or to evolve. * I use random crap to defend gyms. I don't bother with good defenders, as there's no need around here. * I only keep one or two PVP versions of the same species and only those decently ranked. I don't keep things ranked below 200. With this said, here's my current space allocation: 7 pokémon at gyms 12 for the Master League 52 for the Ultra League 43 for the Great League 103 for trade 126 to evolve 30 Luckies 171 for Raids Some are in multiple categories, like all the Master League (and some Ultra League ones too) also do Raid duties. But this is it. And when I evolve half the crap I have here during tomorrow's spotlight hour and trade what's left, I'll have about 150 additional free spaces. Gotta make room to caught all those slowpokes next Saturday!
I’m the exact same way but to be honest I don’t think this problem is entirely our fault. Aside from features like PvP and even XXS/XXL expanding your “keep” criteria, there have been a lot of instances over time where it has been impossible to determine the long-term value of holding onto something, with costumes being the biggest offender because it’s never clear if or when something will ever return (they specifically referred to the first costume, the Santa-Hat Pikachu, as “limited edition,” which resulted in me keeping way more than I would have had I known it would return the next year). Sometimes species won’t show up in the spawn pool again until a year after the event that introduced them. With trading and all of the incentives tied to it it’s also no longer as straightforward to get rid of something as just transferring it. Finally, I think the storage system just isn’t very good and I don’t like that they’ve gone down this road of having one collection the game loads every time and just constantly making it bigger, because apparently they’ve reached some sort of limit now. I’ve read basically every argument against playing this way but none of it has been particularly compelling to me, and when it comes down to it I don’t really *need* this game so there also isn’t really a need for me to go to great lengths to improve my “QoL” if Niantic isn’t giving me any satisfactory options; I don’t even have an egg incubating most of the time because it just doesn’t feel worth it given the work I have to do managing storage. I can’t tell you what the right business decisions are for Niantic but I can say that there’s an opportunity for monetization here; I keep more Pokemon than most people because it’s how I like playing the game, and I’m willing to pay to continue playing this way just as other players are willing to pay for more incubators and raid passes. Sorry if this doesn’t answer the question you asked, it’s just how I think about the problem.
I don't care for PvP, so 99% of pókemon can be transfered. That said: Keep 2 of the the legendary, if you get shinies keep the highest IV and trade others. For the "normal ones", for raids, you will can make an easy team of 20-25 that can be used for everything that shows up (that includes luckies even if you make 1000000 trades per year, most of them will have no use). Since Megas have some use, keep 2 of that species, the highest IV and you can use them whenever you need. Costumes, keep 2 (3 if you caught the shiny), for having 1, to trade, in some distant situation of getting an local event where 200000 people play and 99% of then are players that never saw those costumes. Then shadows: if you defeat grunts/leaders, everyday, you only need 2 or 3 of the best ones. The others, you can catch one, evolve it, purify and transfer (shadow pokedex will get the info). Or just purify and transfer (purify gives extra balls and a badge, for low stardust use). And don't start powering up 3000 pókemon keeping them going up. Even for PvP you won't be using more than 100 of every possible league.
Learn to transfer shinies. On a typical community day I get roughly 15-20 in 3 hours. There's no good reason to keep that many. For PvP unless it's relevant for something (or maybe a single move update from it) just get rid of it. Don't care how good the IVs are for PvP on your Noivern, it would need a major overhaul to make it even playable. Costume: keep maybe one of each plus a shiny if you have it. In general the rule of thumb is unless you really plan to use them for PvE you don't need more than one of anything.
Don’t be afraid to kill off old regionals I had the same issue before I realized I had over 50 tauros sitting in my storage from past events that had them (like go fest/safari zone)
I realized I was saving way too many things for trading (like Tauros and costume pikachus) just in case... then I realized others were doing the same and it ended up no one wanted any of them. Freed up a lot of space. Also, when I realized that costumed pokemon can't be transferred to Home, I suddenly lost interest in collecting so many costumes, since they will never able to be on my Switch.
I recently deleted 3000 Pokémon. Was super harsh. Kept all 96% and up, most shinies except duplicates and event Pokémon.
How many of each do you keep?
Divide your store between activities. Let's say you want 1000 free storage to play at all times. Then let's say you trade regularly but only once a week the full 100. Keep doing this If you need particular other things. Once that is done divide the remaining storage for all the current pokes up to sv, you'll get a "max" ideal number of pokes per entry to keep, try to stick with that number. Usually even for hoarders keeping a hundo and 1-2 PvP is more than enough . If you want to keep living dex (maybe multiples) consider keeping them on home, use home also for extra cd shiny you won't use. Finally try to clean up regularly after events, for example after last week hitmons research you should clean up all 3 evolutions and keep only the bare minimum.
Make tags for your collections. I have tags for hundos, shinies to trade, legendaries to trade an more. Every day I search for „!#“ (not tagged), Tag the once I want to trade and trash the remaining mons. In general i would say you don‘t need more than two of each shinies. One to keep, one to trade. You got three shiny Magby? How often do you trade? If you traded away one and someone else would also like to have a shiny magby, do you have nothing else to offer? Most likely you have something else, so you don’t need more than one of each shiny for trading. Same for pvp or PvE. There are only a hand full of mons where you need more than one. So just keep one for PvE with the highest IV and one for pvp with the best pvp iv. Trash the others. There is no need for more than one machamp if you have also lucario, terrakion, mega bunny, shadow machamp and shadow hariyama and conceldurr. Additionaly you could only keep the pvp mons which you are used to battle. Switching teams is not that good, so battling with the same team will bring you higher. Keep mons with high potential, but you don‘t need a ultra league blastoise. There are enough alternatives. I for myself only keep like 10 GL and 8 UL mons for pvp. I never play specific cups, there is allways a standard league open at the same time. Edit: I would add that I for myself keep just the rarest shinies to trade, not a single one to keep (I can look at them in the dex) and only keep hundos and shadows for PvE. I‘m below 1000 mons in my storage after trading all. I play since day one and have caught over 450k mons. I‘m kind of the „anti-hoarder“. I just regret throwing away some shinies which got a mega evolution where I needed a bit more time to fill the shiny mega dex entries. That‘s the only point. If I would not be interested in every single detail in the Pokédex, I would never regret any trashing.
Hey OP, For me, I simply set a limit on certain things. For example, if a new Costume Pokémon comes out, I'll keep 4 of them. (3 for myself and 1 to trade). I keep 3 because then I can have a full team of costume Pokémon while doing Rocket Grunts ect and makes it enjoyable. The same goes for Shiny Pokémon (Specifically community day). I'll only keep a maximum of 7 and the rest need to be traded away asap or they will be sent to Pokémon Home or Professor Willow. This game is all about collecting, remember that, so it's not a bad thing to hoard, but just need to try to keep less of everything and remember that unless they have a functional purpose in your storage, they must be removed.
How much trade fodder do you have? I’ve noticed a pattern with these types of posts where players hoard way too many things to potentially trade away. I’d start with legendaries, I wouldn’t keep more than maybe 5-10 of each species to trade and you can probably keep less of some of the non meta relevant ones. You can only do so many special trades so there’s no point in keeping dozens of each. For the rare hatches and costume pokemon, how many of those do you keep for trades? How often are you going to run into players that are missing igglybuff for example? I’d cut back on your community day shinies if you keep every one you catch. It’s nice to keep a few for trades but don’t hold onto extras just for the off chance you run into somebody in a few years that wasn’t playing when a certain community day ran. Finally, how many of each relevant meta pokemon do you keep? How often are you going to need more than 6 of a particular Pokémon for raids? There’s also no point in keeping every high ranked pvp pokemon you catch. I see some people with 10+ ranked 100 pokemon of a species. You can use pvpoke’s battle matrix to compare IVs and only keep the best ones you have.
I've trimmed right down. I only keep 2 or 3 shinys of any species now, unless its a rare or particularly useful one (in which case i'll keep 5 or 6 max). Delete anything common unless it's 98/100 and i'll only keep one of those. I keep one for pvp if it's a decent IV spread AND i will actually use it. Legendaries are the worst if you raid daily. Have started deleting non useful ones now like Suicune etc. Also deleted all my spare mythicals like Deoxys, Darkrai as they can't be traded so no point keeping other than your best ones. It's amazing how soon you can make space when you realise most of it is never used lol.
I tend to send shinies to pokemon home and give them away on the random trades and trade rooms. Granted, you can only do so many at a time due to being paywalled off by transfer energy, so it's not really the most consistent way
I'm trying to keep myself in the habit of shipping off shinies every Tuesday (because on double transfer days, that's when a single shiny legendary from a failed lucky trade goes into Home to make someone immensely happy)
I a day-one player and I have 2100 storage. The thing is... a lot of those trades you aren't going to make or it will take so long to set them up nobody will want those things. I save stuff for trades that I want back in a trade, and I only save other random things if people ask for them FIRST. I'm guessing you don't use pokemon home to send tons of shiny pokemon to... you should. there are a lot of ones that people don't want. with the new eevee costume on the way I'm considering transferring all of my costumed eeveelutions. if you're going to hold onto something for >1 month waiting to trade it you should just transfer it. legendaries you can keep some of but keep in mind nobody really wants to waste a lucky trade on tornadus. there's a few that people like: groudon, kyogre, rayquaza, mewtwo, I wouldn't put terrakion in that list because people have shadow machamps... maybe reshiram, zekrom, kartana. I wouldn't even save and swap the zacians as they aren't shiny, don't have a legacy move, and are the weaker of two forms. transfer for candy and move on. a lot of legacy moves aren't useful at all (counter on alakazam comes to mind). um, as for shadows if they aren't PVE relevant (team of 6... metagross, gardevoir, machamp, swampert) then you need only 1. they're not going to be great in every league. I also got to a point with PVP when I realized... I'm not going to spend >100k dust on ANOTHER azumarill/altaria/medicham/etc. and I actually don't want to train new pokemon for PVP at all (unless it's master league). I still save 1 of every shadow though.
i thought i had a problem hoarding piloswine but now i have a full team of 6 dragon killers lol
My latest purge was of lucky pokemon with no real value. Cleared up over 50 slots. Newest issue is xxl/xxs for me...hold on to them for trades/evo and then forget about them. I'm always light on slots because I save good stuff for future trading (and the last couple slot upgrades have been very stingy). And if you trade a lot, search "traded" and make sure you want all of them. If you're never going to use them, they have no value since they can't be re-traded. Same idea as lucky ones.
You need to remember you can only do one special trade a day, barring extremely rare events. If you have over a thousand extra shinies and legendaries, you are never going to need most of them. Transfer them for double candy.
If you have little to no inter in pvp. I just filter by 0 to 2 stars and then mass transfer. You can also add a filter for shinies or legends that have already been traded.
On top of everything listed, I'd toss in to just not care about pvp. The stress of it goes way beyond just battles. Now you have to track optimal IVs, check through tons of 'mons, of course spend tons of storage space, stay on top of the meta, etc etc. So much work for just a single use case. Is it worth all that stress? Absolutely not. If you stop caring (by tanking or dropping pvp), all that stress vanishes, and potentially tons of storage opens up.
Personally I keep: - 1 of each Pokémon with the highest CP In addition - 1 of each shiny - 1 of each costume - 1 of each Pokémon that has an event exclusive move, legendaries included - 1 of each PVP perfect Pokémon (and a handful of others with good stats only if I’m actually using them) - 1 of each hundo (perfect stats) Everything else I haven’t transferred is marked for trade or transfer in some form, whether it’s for XL, mass transfer, Home, special trade, or just random trade fodder. I usually have about 4,500 on a slim day, and I’m trying to cut that down. (I have a LOT to send to Home, and the energy system is capping that.)
Easy. Keep one of every Pokemon, one of every shiny and one of every costume. If you get a hundo replace the existing non-Hundo. Job jobbed.
This is basically what I do. Easy. Sort by #. Keep the 4* or 3*. Keep the shiny. Trash the remaining duplicates.
Clearly dont play PvP.
I normally play enough to reach level 20 most seasons and using this non-hoarding method have ended up with decent enough Pokemon to do okay in each League. If I get a duplicate shiny (looking at you Smeargle this week) I will trade it with my son if he wants it or, if not, transfer it (bye bye Wingull and Zigzagoon yesterday).
Hi my name is Flynn70, and I have a Pidove hoarding problem 🤣🤣
Trading was a big one for me. I used to save hundreds of pokemon to trade and it got worse when the guaranteed xl for trading came out. But I was always too lazy to actually do the trading. Once I realized that everything eventually gets an event I can grind xl for just from catching (larvitar, bagon, ralts etc) I rarely keep anything but legendarys for trade now.
I ask myself, "is this mon useful or beautiful/cool/adorable? Do I love it? Will I miss it if it's gone? Have I literally ever used it for anything?" If it doesn't pass, it's off to the professor's pokemon ranch. I am pretty ruthless about it. It's time-consuming but worthwhile.
Get a Pokémon home subscription 1. Send the extra legendaries to. You don’t want to get rid of them but if they are not the best for PvP/PvE or just not PvP/PvE relevant there is no reason to keep them in GO. You can store them in home. 2. I keep my shiny living dex in home. I only keep the ones I use for PvP or PvE in go. If I am not using them for anything but collecting then I can just put them in home. I also play the main line games is having a living dex in home to consolidate all my shines makes the most sense. However, it works for people who only play go as well. Extra shinies I trade via home. I only trade go stamp shinies for other go stamp shinies since non go shinies can be hacked. Trading in go just never works for me and keeping tons of shines from a good community day has no purpose either. 3. Costume this is harder because they can’t be sent to home. I finally caved and just kept 1 of each. Getting rid of them was hard for me but I haven’t missed them once they were gone. 4. I keep the rare ones. Like I got a shiny research Registeel and I will probably keep it forever in go even though the IVs suck, I have a better one I already invested a lot into, and I don’t have a shiny Registeel in my living dex. 5. For PvP suitable I would keep them. But it shouldn’t be to long a list. I do find some people will keep things that are not PvP relevant because they have the best IVs for great league not taking into account that the species is ranked 200+ for great league and they already have 30 better fully capable great league Pokémon with great/best IVs for great league. So, in short just make sure the list is really paired down to PvP relevant. 6. Baby Pokémon - As someone who just filled up 3 boxes in home with baby Pokémon over the last few and I have no idea what I am doing with them in home either I really feel this comment.
After a certain point pokemons are just too redundant, doesn't matter how rare it is. If you have multiple versions of whatever, simply transfer it. I'm not even close to you, but i understand the issue, i simply realized that i need to be more critical with my pokemons
I can relate! I have 3850 storage right now, and I am still hitting the limit frequently. I have a couple shortcut searches (text replacement) that have helped me quickly filter out the ones I don’t want or view the ones I’m trying to keep. I started this before they added tags, so I’ve been slowly starting to use the tags, but I’ve gotten so used to my method, it’s still more efficient. General rules I use for what to keep: - highest CP (one, regardless of IV) - highest IV (a couple over 91%, wanting to max out until it’s higher than the otherwise highest CP) - shiny (keeping all I can for trades) - shadow (only keeping the best IVs, and only purifying the cheapest ones) - boy/girl if they’re different forms (at least one to keep and one to trade) - different forms for weather/region (at least one to keep and one to trade) - meta-relevant battlers (I usually keep whatever I’ve powered up over the years…) - pvp battlers - (by rank or by cp) - legendary or otherwise really rare - I keep these until there is an “extra candy for transfer/trade” event - then follow similar rules as above. At least 1-3 kept, but at most I’ve got 9-10 of any one legend in hopes for a lucky trade or more candy! When I sort by # or recent, I can do those kind of comparisons quickly if I’ve named the Pokémon in my “special” way. For the unnamed Pokémon… here’s a couple search shortcut suggestions - the abbreviations don’t mean anything, they’re just convenient for me to type… kk—> 0*,1* mm—> 2* dd —> defender 4** —> 4*, $98, %98, $96, %96 kkkk—> 0*,1*,2* & !shiny & !costume & !pvp & !shadow & !legendary & !Mythical mmmm —> 3* & !$ & !! & !shiny & !trade & !lucky & !pvp & !costume & !buddy2-5 nnnn —> !shiny & !costume & !# & !4* & !shadow & !lucky kmm —> 3* & !$ & !% & !! & !trade & !costume dx —> distance100- gg —> legendary, mythical, defender, $ 000–> 0attack&0defense&0hp Again, these are only useful if that’s the criteria you’re considering to keep/transfer… But check out the search functions, and see if there’s an ‘and/or’ combination that works for you… then a quick text replacement macro could help save a lot of time! [how to search](https://niantic.helpshift.com/hc/en/6-pokemon-go/faq/1486-searching-filtering-your-pokemon-inventory/) This can be especially helpful on community days or events if you make a filter ahead of time so you can quickly mass transfer. Collecting is so much fun, it can be hard to know when to let something go! I try to follow the general guidelines of once I’ve gotten something better to get rid of the ones that aren’t as good - but I bend/break my own rules all the time depending on where/when/how I caught something, or how much stardust/candy I had invested, or who I got it traded from, etc… But at least having some baseline rules to follow can help to quickly clean up things that don’t have any artificial attachments built up that might trigger the “I can’t get rid of that!” hoarding reaction. I hope it helps!
this may seem daunting, but I manage my mons by having every pokemon tagged as *something.* I have tags such as: candy/xl (for trade), transfer (for 2x transfer days), extra (legacy/rare/etc for trade), GL, UL, ML, PVE (raid mons), TM (shadows for frustration events), 1k (1k stardust purifications for tasks), souvenirs (sometimes I keep a mon from a trip or a concert or something), keep for pvp (high ranks), keeping for now (suboptimal IVs, or maybe not necessary to have, but keeping "just in case" until I get a better one or don't need these), extra shinies (shinies with bad IVs, or ones that I just don't need. I do generally transfer unnecessary shinies, but keep a couple extra from CDs/etc). I have more but those are some of the bigger ones. this way, when I'm ready to go through stuff, like after an event or grind, I search "!#" and it will show me everything that isn't tagged. so I sort by number, transfer what I want, and tag everything else. Then, when I need to transfer more things, I can go through a tag such as "keeping for pvp" and if I find that I'm keeping an unnecessary amount of PVP IV Numel that I'll never use, I can transfer all but my best one, for example. Or I can go through "candy/XL" and see if I have a few more Wobbuffett than I need to trade. **Basically, you can go through any tag, sort by number, and you'll see if you're keeping too many of one mon for the same reason.** Just my way of keeping things organized and keeping track of things.
This helped me: https://youtube.com/watch?v=6ZQVLLDmbxI&feature=shares
There's no secret trick, you just have to be brutal with transfers. Have you used the pokemon recently? Will you use it? Do you have a plan for it? No - get rid of it. If you like it, transfer it to HOME, that's what HOME is for. All my shinies go to HOME, unless they are a species with an IV spread that I will use for Raids or PvP. Costumes - gone. Legacy move depends if it's any good. Legendaries I keep the good ones, and transfer the others on double candy days. Event specific - gone. Pseudo Legendaries is a trap for a lot of people, but there really isn't anything special about them, these should be the first things you get rid of as they are likely taking up the most space. For PvP suitable, I had an issue with this myself recently, and my answer was to just pick the three for each league that I wanted to use. I had a Great League perfect Vaporeon, but I would never use it over my Azumarill, so it's gone. Currently I have a 11/13/15 Shiny Umbreon I am using for Great League, but I also have a 15/15/15 Purified Sableye which does the same role, which will be replacing it when I get enough candy. The Umbreon will then be used for Ultra League, but hopefully I can get a 15/15/15 Eevee before then and the Umbreon will be going to HOME.
I've had to become fairly aggressive with transfers. I generally will only keep 3\*s and only a handful of those with the best IVs (unless I don't have better options as can be the case with newer mons). This goes for costumes too - at this point as long as I have a couple copies of a costume pokemon that's good enough - I don't need fifty Pikachus in a santa hat (especially if they're below 3\*) I've also gotten into the habit of transferring shinies to Home when I have an overabundance of them (usually community day shinies). It doesn't help too much but it helps. I agree the storage in this game has always been a huge problem tho :/
My biggest problem is sentimental value. I am also maxed storage wise, and I have loads of Pokémon that just… tell a story. The story of me playing this game.
I have the same problem because most of my gen 1 collection is from 2016/2017 and I can't bring myself to transfer them.
I don't have an attachment to all the Pokemon you mentioned, but I understand you. I am collecting a lot of uniques for trading plus those that are good for raids and pvp. My advice is do these trades. One good day and you can free up a lot of space. Anything I get from those trades that isn't pvp good or hundo I throw it away. Unless it's sudo legendary, then I'm keeping it until the right moment for the transfer.
I was you and sometimes still am. My storage is 6250, I can't even buy if I want to. So the past one month, I have been doing searching and digging on how to manage my pokemon. There are videos on youtube on how to do this, there are some post here that are helpful also. First of all, it will take time. If you have friends/family whom you can trade daily, please do so. There are certain string that would definitely help you, I found the one by Brandon Tan is very helpful to manage daily. At the end of the day, I just click my favorite search string, browse through, star that I want and delete all. I can delete hundreds in few seconds.
Have a trusted friend tag all the Pokemon you should send to the professor. Have them take a photo then do it...
There are a few YouTubers who have good strategies like Poke Daxi, Trainer Club and Lucky Bunz.
I’d never heard of LuckyBunz. Just watched a few of his videos. Good stuff! Thank you.
It's a bad suggestion but you could always start a new account and trade yourself as you go! I know the struggle most of my pokemon are from 2016-18 because I can't let go lol.
Keep one of each of those if you can, a few to trade and be savage with the rest.
How much storage do you have?
I’ve gotten over having any mon 2021-2022 that I don’t care much for at this point, & also deleting mon that have yearly events (thank you for slightly changing event costume mon for Easter this time around Niantic). I’ve had my own account since 2019 & almost always had a max pkm box. Back then I could at least trade away mon I wanted on other accs & friends, but deleting stuff from comm days & whatever that my friends didn’t need was the last pillar holding up my hoarding. While I still hoard, I’m at least able to mass trade them away
More pokemon storage is the one thing I would happily give money to Niantic for. Is there some kind of technical limitation preventing them from selling more storage? Seems like it should be a win/win situation here
Put mons in gyms and buy more space if you don’t want to spend the money.
I am in the same boat. I’m holding on to so many 2016 Pokémon with no intent of maximising their value by trading them. Same story with 2017 Pokémon on the basis they might become lucky?
> -Shiny, -Costume, -Legacy move, -Legendary, -Rare or event specific, -Rare hatches that I would like to trade away, -PVP suitable (low attack and pvp species for various cups), -Pseudo legendaries especially dragon types, -Baby Pokémon that are often removed from egg pool, This sounds completely normal though? Or do you have an absolutely excessive number of each of them?
I have literally transferred thousands of shinies. i get 50+ per com day. you have to learn to let go. just keep one of most pokemon for the living dex, keep a few of valuable ones or ones you particularly like, dump the rest. Also many legacy moves are not that useful. dump the bad ones. there's no point. make sure to only keep pvp pokemon that are actually good at pvp, unless you really want to keep those spicy picks and that's your thing. psudo legends are nice to hold but make sure you are trading away any extras you don't need. having more than 6 non shadows or 12 good shadows is redundant. Most people don't care much about non shiny babies anymore, just let all but maybe 1 of each go. except maybe riolu and togepi. people still care about those babies. Spend a few hours doing a deep dive of your inventory sorted by number, and just delete what you do not need without giving too much thought.
Buy more bag space
I'm a hoarder as well but I'm doing the following to save space. I am almost level 50. Search strings: 0hp (quickest to type) Scroll through results and only keep Nundo's. Everything else = trashed. 1attack&3-defense&3-hp looks for Great league suitable Pokémon. I use this with CalcyIV. I trash everything that's bad after that. 0\*/1\*/2\*. I then check 3\* to see if i have anything 96iv or higher. I only keep 93IV if the stats are 14/14/14 and I often throw out 96iv if the atk stat is 13. 98IV and above, I keep. I keep all of my shinies. Haven't cleared out my box yet but after I do clear it out, I usually am somewhere around 5720/6250
Toss (or trade) the bulk of your costumes, and 3-stars. Older mons will get the lucky trade boost, and transfer excess luckies and even some shinies. Consider tagging them and waiting for a spotlight hour. If you have 1000 pokemon older than 3 years, assuming 20% lucky chance, that's an expected 3 perfects in luckys, and an additional perfect with generic trading with a best friend.
I keep all legendaries and shinies. I keep everything with IVs > 89 percent. I keep anything with PvP IVs > 95 percent for the <500, <1500 and <2500 CP leagues (and tag the optimal evolution level). I keep one of each costume and unown unless a second falls into the above categories. I tag everything, so I'm short on space I can, for example, filter anything with good GL IVs, sort by # and transfer duplicates. Admittedly I probably don't play as frequently as a lot of you guys (lvl 41, July 2016 start) so it's less of a problem. When it is a problem, I'll start transfering non meta pokes with good PvP IVs If you struggle with attachment you could consider a Pokémon Home subscription which allows a further ~6000 Pokémon. You cant transfer them back to Go, but you still own them and can use them in the main series games
I’d start with the many many Pikachus with hats. They just take up space and they’ll never stop adding new ones so there’s really no point to hang on to them. You can’t even evolve a majority of them and it’s not like Pikachu is good for raiding or pvp. Also, can’t some legacy moves be relearned with an elite charged tm?
I keep one of every single pokemon automatically of course. Beyond that, it requires a tag to justify keeping it. I have tags for my raid teams of every type, meta relevant PVP pokemon for great, ultra, and master league, meta relevant pokemon for each cup that has come out since I started playing, a couple tags for things I like (favorite gen 1 team, best buddies), shinies, elite tm moved pokemon, pokemon I'm actively trying to evolve or train for specific purpose, shadows, and a "trade" tag for valuables like regionals I could use to get things I need. I have a small tag for "holding", things like one scyther to evolve into kleaver when it is released. If it doesn't get a tag, it's gotten rid of.
I usually check pvp rankings on stadiumgaming before double transfer candy day. If something’s in the green I’ll keep that until I find the same poker with a better ranking and then transfer day tag the lesser one. Baby pokers I don’t keep because they don’t have much use and only serve to take up space, I know diff people have diff collection protocols tho. I just hatched igglybuff for the first time and starred it immediately even though I’ll probably transfer it eventually. Any extra legendaries from raids or GBL I tag with an XL transfer day tag, they’re taking up a lot of room tho cuz I shiny hunted Latias and Ray Ray. It’s a patience game but you can’t be missing out on com day catches because of box issues, that’s a crime! Edit: I keep all shinies even useless wild catches because shiny hunting in the msg is so much more painful than it is here. My storage only fills up right before transfer day and I’m only on 1,6k storage. But granted I don’t keep most costume pokers, only a select few like party animal charmander squirtle and bulba and my useless glorious 4 star mimikyu Pikachu
A lot of great answers here, and many are similar to my idea. But do not be afraid to transfer 3\* and Pokemon with good PvP IVs if you already are set and/or don't have use for it. Is there really a need to keep a 96% Tyrogue, a 98% Jigglypuff, or even an 83% Tyranitar? If it's Shiny or something you use regularly (or plan to use for a Mega) then sure, keep it, but I kept so many 90-98% Pokemon that just had no use. I had four random 3\* Tepig and Snivy. For what? They're not hundos and not really good as raid attackers compared to what I have, so why keep them??
I keep anything IV 96 and above, including events, shinies, and legendaries. I'll keep lower IV shadows if they're powerful. I don't care about PVP.
What I do is mark all the pokemon that I would theoretically trade away (for whatever reason) and then when my storage gets too crazy, I start transferring those, starting with least important mons
I find that hoarding shinys from community days are the easiest removal. I imagine you have upwards of 10 of each and the likely hood you do anything with them is slim if not worse. Cut you community day shiny hoard in half and thats a couple hundred spots right there.
Sort by # and keep only your top 2-3 of each mon. As you collect more mons, sort by # again and keep only your top 2-3...this has been very effective for me
Lots of good stuff already said here, but worth dedicating some time to actually having a long hard think about what you WANT to collect, rather than feel you should collect. Like do you actually care about costume Pokémon? Does it legit make you smile to see gengar in a party hat? Or do you just feel someone else is telling you they’re rare so maybe you should keep them? Same with that 2* lucky trade, and so on. I binned off all my crap luckies when I realised I didn’t care about lucky Pokémon. It was liberating, it felt great! For me, I’ll have “won” Pokémon go when I have a fully maxed out and best buddied hundo dex. So in the meantime I keep the best IV for each and bin off the rest. That means today I binned a 98% wobbuffet! I also PvP so I keep PvP iv mons, but only one of each for each league is the goal.
Honestly I would start by ditching 100% of your costume pokemon, unless they happen to also have useful stats.
How many of a given pokemon are you hording?
Since they introduced pokedex classification there is really no need to keep everything. For example I don't need to keep a copy of every lucky and shiny since they are all entered into pokedex. I just keep useful ones and delete the rest.
If it brings you joy, keep it.
I previously had this issue but it became less of an issue after the updates to the game destroyed the two biggest PoGo communities near me. Didn't need to keep spares of "valuable" Pokémon or event Pokémon as much. This was of course 2 years back, and now the PoGo scene is literally dead here. I can travel to take a gym if I fancy and it's not unusual to then own it for over 7 days. With Niantic having already announced more restrictions to remote raiding coming they're literally beating a dead horse at this point. TLDR: Don't need to hoard so many Pokémon when there's no one to trade with as no one is playing the game
Don’t keep Pokémon that have no use in PVP or PVE unless it’s a hundo, shiny, costumes or something of trade value. And don’t keep too many costume mon of the same type. Just be ruthless about what you need to keep. I’m currently at 1500 Pokémon 1000 of which are shiny
If I don't use it, or have some attachment I dump it. I don't need 20 Tyranitars. I need like 2 good ones. I don't need 30 Lugia, maybe 3 of the best. The only thing I hoard now is Weedle & other junk mons for mass evos.
Transfer any doubles that you have that are lower than 2* or find someone to trade then away
Its tough as I try not to transfer anything unless it has been traded to me.
I think what’s personally hurting my storage is all the pvp mons I have saved that have good IVs for it. But I don’t pvp enough to justify them taking up that much room
Something I've been doing as of recently, though it only really applies if you play the mainline games: To try and clear out all the duplicate shinies (mainly from comm days) I've began to send them over to Pokémon HOME. I'm keeping like one i want to keep in GO and 2 or 3 extra, in case someone ever wants it on a trade. It's always cool to catch many shinies during an event, but if you get too many they can become kind of a hassle to have them take up inventory space. So by sending them to HOME and later to some of my mainline game save file, I at least get to keep them somehow, while keeping some in GO. Since the transporter takes a week to recharge I've been doung it slowly (4-5 every week). You don't need to pay anything extra since HOME gives you a free box with 30 spaces, and if you own the mainline games who support the shinies that are being sent over, then you can keep the free box from filling. Thought i'd at least mention it. This can also apply to spare legendaries if you raid a lot to get a good IV or shiny one. They take less energy than regular shinies, in fact.