23 Days of Saving, Spent on What?

What this article answers

CardWish point redemption has one unusual property: every high-rarity card carries the same price. ★1, ★2, Shiny 1, Shiny 2 — whichever you pick, it costs 30 points, which is roughly 23 days of unbroken daily claiming.

Nothing else on this site works that way. Gifts are free but capped at one per day, so players spend that slot on the most expensive ◇4 ex. Trades demand a card of the same rarity in return, and anything ◇3 or above also burns the in-game trade currency players call “sand”, which is hard to come by — so the volume piles up on ◇1 and ◇2, the trades that cost none. The previous article took that apart: the gap between those two rankings comes from cost structure, not preference.

So what happens when the price is flattened? When every card costs the same, and that cost is three weeks of showing up, the choice is no longer distorted by cost — what you get is a pure ranking of desire. The answer turns out to be extremely concentrated: over 90% of players pick the same kind of card, and it is not the flashiest one.

• Redemptions1,636
• Players1,552
• ★2 share92.4%
• Data as of2026-10-12

All figures are real player redemptions (cards issued through owner privileges are excluded). Every table is generated by the system and refreshes automatically.

Gate one: thousands are saving — how many make it?

The first hurdle is not choosing a card, it is reaching the threshold. One successful claim per day earns 1 point, and every 3rd, 6th, 9th consecutive day adds 1 more, so a perfect streak lands on the threshold in about 23 days; a few broken streaks push it to 25–30. That road filters a lot of people out:

The last row is the interesting one: 1,958 redemptions are already unlocked across the site and still unspent. In other words, a large share of the people who survived three weeks reached the threshold and then did not redeem — usually because they are holding out for one specific card, or because they never noticed the redeem button next to the progress bar.

Points never expire and never reset, so waiting costs you nothing in points. But one warning: cards run out. While you wait, the card you want may sell out and you will have to wait for a restock. More on that below.

Gate two: what that one chance gets spent on

This ranking is more concentrated than any other on the site: the top two cards alone take almost half of all redemptions, and the top ten are almost entirely ★2 full-art supporters — Copycat, Cyrus, Sabrina, Wally, Irida, Erika and the like, the ones where the character fills the whole card.

Trainer cards (supporters, items, stadiums — anything that is not a Pokémon) account for 81.7% of all successful redemptions. Shiny cards (✨1, ✨2) — in theory the rarest, brightest, most prize-like tier — come to just 5.4% combined.

What the catalogue holds vs. what people want

Put "how many cards exist in the redemption catalogue" next to "how many were actually redeemed" and the gap is obvious:

★2 is under 40% of the catalogue yet takes over 90% of redemptions; shiny cards are a third of the catalogue and end up in single digits. Supply structure and demand structure are essentially unrelated — this is not "people pick whatever there is most of", it is a very specific preference.

Why ★2 full-art supporters?

Three reasons stack up.

1. Once the price is flat, only the hardest-to-get tier is worth spending on. Shiny cards are rare, but they headline current packs — you can still pull them. ★2 full-art supporters are the signature cards of older packs: the top entries come from several different generations of boosters that left the spotlight long ago, so most players have almost no realistic way to pull them now. If everything costs 30 points, you take the one you will otherwise never own.

2. Supporters are cards a deck actually plays. The full-art version has exactly the same effect as the regular print, so it is playable and collectible at once. A shiny card, by contrast, is usually collection-only and may not fit the deck at all. The previous article's conclusion holds here too: the trade ranking measures missing deck parts — and the redemption ranking measures the narrow overlap of "deck part" and "trophy".

3. Once every three weeks, people pick something memorable. Saving points is a process you feel; spending it on something ordinary feels like a waste. Full-art supporters are the most recognisable, most trophy-like tier in the game.

So what this ranking really says is: with price removed as a variable, players want the intersection of rare × playable × unobtainable — not simply the rarest card. It is also the only one of our three rankings that measures desire alone: gifts are limited to one a day, trades demand a card back, and only redemption charges the same for every card.

Gate three: does the redemption go through?

The success rate is 94.5% — higher than ordinary gift claims, because anyone who gets this far knows the process. The remaining failures and cancellations break down like this:

The largest failure category has nothing to do with redemption itself — it is the in-game step never being finished. Our delivery account sends you a friend request; you have to open the game, go to Social → Friends → Needs Response, accept it, and complete the trade. If you are away and the invite times out, the request dies.

The good news: your points come back. A redemption reserves the allowance when the request is created and refunds it automatically if the request ends in failure or cancellation, so three weeks of saving are never lost. You can simply redeem again.

Three habits avoid nearly all of these: submit when you will be online for the next ten minutes, check that your language appears in the dropdown before submitting (if it is missing, that language is currently out of stock), and hold a card of the same rarity to hand over (a game rule, not ours).

Supply: being in the catalogue is not the same as being available

The redemption catalogue holds 1,011 high-rarity cards, but stock moves constantly, so only 786 are actually selectable right now. The shortfall is mostly ★2 — the most popular tier, and the one that sells out fastest. A language that is out of stock simply does not appear in the dropdown: if you cannot see it, it is temporarily unavailable — pick another language, or come back later.

Stock is also independent per language, and the coverage gap is large:

In practice: if you do not care which language is printed on the card, pick the language with the highest coverage — you will have the most cards to choose from. If you insist on collecting one language, be ready to wait for restocks. Languages mix freely and play identically; details in the card language guide.

How to use all this

If you are still saving: the priority is not breaking the streak. The streak bonus looks minor point by point, but a perfect run versus a patchy one differs by a full week. Claim any ◇ card you happen to need — points only care that a claim succeeded, not which card it was.

If you have just unlocked: check the language stock of the card you want in the Card Dex first and make sure it is selectable before you submit. The popular cards on this list drain fastest, so when it is in stock, that is your moment.

If you cannot decide: this ranking is the answer thousands of players voted for with three weeks of their time — ★2 full-art supporters are playable and collectible at once, and they are the tier you can least replace by opening packs. That said, if your deck is missing a specific ★1 or a specific shiny, take that one: the ranking is guidance for the undecided, not a rule.

New to the flow? The full redemption steps are in the points and high-rarity redemption guide; for how the rarity tiers work and how each is obtained, see the rarity explainer.

What this data cannot tell you

1. These are CardWish players, not all players. Anyone who checks in for three straight weeks for a single card already leans toward "serious about completing a collection". The sample is biased.

2. Only cards that were in stock can appear. A card that has been unavailable for a long time naturally shows zero redemptions — that does not mean nobody wants it. This ranking measures the intersection of wanted and obtainable.

3. The redemption window is shorter than the cumulative total. Claim records are kept for 30 days, while points accumulate forever. Redemption opened recently so the two nearly coincide today, but over time the counts here will fall below the site's all-time redemption total. The period is stated in the header.

4. The top two have a first-mover advantage. The earliest players to unlock had fewer options (the catalogue and the stock were both narrower then), which lets early favourites build a lead. Expect the order to shuffle as new packs bring new full-art supporters.

This page updates itself

Every table above is generated directly from real redemption records and live stock, and keeps updating as players save and redeem — it is not a frozen snapshot. Two things are worth watching when you come back: how long a new pack's full-art supporter takes to break into the top ten, and whether that pile of unlocked-but-unspent redemptions ever gets used.