Pokemon community reveals their craziest trades ever

A viral online post had Pokemon players confessing their most bizarre trades. From cards to in-game ‘mon, fans opened up about the strangest things they had to give up to get their favorite characters.

From its inception, Pokemon was designed around getting players to meet and share ‘mon that they caught in the game. This was largely why the series remained off home consoles for decades.

One parent’s viral story about a unique trade their child made in real life inspired the community to open up about their strangest experiences involving bartering with other fans in the Game Freak RPGs.

Pokemon players share strangest trade stories

The discussion first kicked off when a parent’s post on the r/pokemon subreddit went viral after they explained how their child had traded Pokemon cards for an actual pet parakeet.

“My 6 year old daughter traded some pokemon cards to my neighbor’s son today. In return, he gave her a parakeet. She named him Pidgeot since one card was a Mega Pidgeot,” the post read.

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The user then asked the community what their most interesting trades have been throughout their history of playing the hit Nintendo titles. The post sparked a flurry of interesting tales from fellow fans.

One fan explained how they were able to score a Base Set Charizard card that is now worth anywhere from $30k to 360k. “I once traded a garden gnome for three Pokemon packs at a boy scout Christmas gift exchange. Ended up pulling holo Charizard (THE holo Charizard). I still have the cards,” they said.

Unbelievably, another person revealed how their sibling scored a special tattoo: “Not me, but my brother exchanged Pokemon cards for his first tattoo. I dont know what cards or what the exchange rate was, but he got a Gastly.”

Not every trade involved Pokemon card. Another user explained how they traded a book for one of the Game Freak RPGs: “I had a second copy of the fourth Harry Potter book. A classmate had played and finished Pokemon Ruby but had not read the book. So we traded. Hoenn will always be my favorite region.”

The viral thread had a whole host of interesting stories from tragic childhood mistakes to epic trades that resulted in fans securing some pretty valuable Pokemon items by today’s standards.

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If nothing else, it’s a great example of how the Pokemon creators’ wish that it would bring players together in real life actually worked.