Pokemon Go: What to buy with your hard-earned Coins

Last Updated on: 23rd July 2021, 11:14 am

This is a Pokemon Go article designed to help you answer the question “What to buy” with your coins – it’s a simple question, but the store is riddled with items not worth the pricetags attached to them. So what actually is worth buying in Pokemon Go’s store?

We’re all likely familiar with the question of how to earn more coins by now after all, and I’ve covered that here already – so now we move on to the obvious follow-up question of what to buy with those coins in Pokemon Go.

What to buy in Pokemon Go

Why does this matter?

Simply put, some of the item options are… at best cheap scams, at worst blatant scams. There are very few scenarios that 10 Max potions for 200 coins will be a great deal, for example.

Similarly, 6 Max Revives for 180 coins – which is more than 3 days of the maximum coin income – is simply not worth entertaining as a viable notion if you value your coins as a F2P player.

You can get better value out of spinning a handful of Pokestops and that doesn’t cost you multiple days of income.

If you have a Pokestop or more near your home you are likely nowhere near item-starved enough for these to be good deals, and you can actually ignore quite a large segment of the store even as a F2P player.

So, we’ve established that our question is “What to buy in Pokemon Go?” as we now understand that some items simply aren’t effective purchases. And any F2P player who’s been trying to get more coins likely knows they need to be careful with how they spend them.

So, let’s get started with what is actually worth buying, shall we?

What to buy in Pokemon Go, for real this time

One coin bundles

These should be fairly self-explanatory, and while contents may vary, the cost is a single coin. It’s hard to make a bundle that isn’t worth a single coin.

As such, these are basically always worthwhile, so you should keep an eye out for ’em in the store. If you’re checking the store on a daily basis, you’ll likely notice these on your own.

Rarer variants of these are available entirely for free – ultimately the difference there is fairly negligible. These types of bundles, one coin or zero, both tend to appear either at the start of a new week or during events – keep an eye out for them.

Incense

More so with the 8 Incense bundle, this is one of the best items you can buy in terms of pure value right now, at least during the Pandemic.

Incense has been significantly buffed during the effects of COVID, alongside it also being reduced in costs.

If you have excess coins to spend regularly, keeping yourself with a reserve of at least a handful of Incense in your inventory at any time is a great idea.

Pokemon Go Beldum's Incense Day Banner, March 2021 — Beldum had an Incense day during March 2021, where Incense was an incredibly useful item to have a stock of waiting to be used.
Credit: Niantic, Inc.

Pokemon Go throws events at you quite frequently as well, many of which will influence what Incense will spawn – having some available on short notice can make a big difference to how much value you get out of events.

If you only buy one thing off my list for “what to buy” in Pokemon Go, make it these or the item up next.

Remote Raid passes

These are great, they let you raid with any of your friends around the world – you’ll still need an invite from someone else, but you’ll be able to join that raid from literally anywhere in the world.

They’re not particularly cheap, and it’s naturally better to buy them in the bundle of 3 to keep the costs down – 250 coins versus 100 coins x 3 -, though sometimes you do need to buy an individual one to catch important raids.

You might want to be careful buying a bulk pack of 3 and holding on to them though, as often free weekly bundles will include a remote raid pass, and you can’t obtain any more when you hold three at a time.

An in-game store bundle of three remote raid passes for Pokemon Go — Remote Raid Passes are also sometimes seen in Free bundles for compensation or during big events, credit: Niantic, Inc.

Remote Raid Pass Tip:

You can somewhat cheat this limit – if you have 2 remote raid passes you can still buy the 3 remote raid pass bundle, and it will jump you to 5 in total – but you won’t be able to get any more through most means until you’re back within the normal limit.

Storage upgrades

Both types of Storage Upgrade – those for items and those for Pokemon – are worth the price tag of 200 coins a piece for 50 slots.

You are in my experience at least more likely to need Item storage than Pokemon storage early on, at least if you have access to Pokestops or a good friends list to keep the supply of items going.

If you’re playing for the long term, these will both ultimately become essential items to buy in Pokemon Go at some stage or other – even if you only keep Pokemon that are your favourites, shiny or have exceptional stats, that number will only slowly increase over time.

As for items, your item count will likely jump whenever you clear out pending gifts or start spinning a lot of stops, so making sure to have a lot of space available to fill up in terms of your maximum limit can make that process a lot less tedious.

Bundles – Adventure Box

This one just about edges its way into worth buying in my opinion. In theory, all of the contents of the bundle are good alone. But it does feel a bit lightweight when you break it down. Lets get into the details:

30 x Ultra Balls
3 x Star Pieces
3 x Poffin
15 x Super Incubators

So, sure, we can always find more ways to use Ultra Balls. And alright, short term more star dust from Star Pieces. Can’t say I have a problem with that either. Poffins? Eh, I rarely use them as they’re very rare to F2P players, but they’re good items.

15 Super Incubators though? That’s the meat of this bundle. A single Super Incubator costs 200 coins normally – that means if this bundle costs a little more, at 1500, you’d be getting 15 Super Incubators at half price alone. Never mind the extra items above.

With that said… the bundle does feel a bit… cheap, doesn’t it? I mean 1480 coins is a hell of a lot for F2P players. That’s nearly a literal month of coin income at max. For… short term supplies and 15 incubators?

If you ever want Super Incubators, this is definitely the best place to do it. That’s 45 egg hatches right there, but that price tag feels a tad extreme.

Pokemon Go Bundles — An example of some of the bundles available in the store, including the Ultea Box, which is up next. Credit: PokemonGo Fandom Wiki

Bundles – Ultra Box

Personally, I debated putting this one in the less clear cases section, but I feel like the inclusion of Adventure Box up here means Ultra Box deserves a slot too. Now, to get on with the bundle:

40 x Ultra Balls
15 x Premium Battle Passes
5 x Incense
5 x Lucky Egg

On the one hand, Ultra balls, Incense, and Lucky eggs are all good items. On the other hand, similar to the Adventure Box, they’re really just filler items meant to make the box appeal more.

You certainly shouldn’t be relying on a box with a price tag of 1480 coins to get you Incense when the bulk buy deal is such good value for example. Lucky Eggs are more debatable, but how many of those do you really need?

The main feature of this box is the set of 15 Premium Battle Passes. This is a similar sales pitch to the bulk incubators available in the Adventure box – but Premium Battle Passes are already worth 100 coins each in the store naturally.

For non-PvPers, it’s a lot of raid tickets at a slightly discounted price tag with some extras thrown in – but you need to build up a month’s worth of coins for the discount.

For PvPers, you get the added bonus of being able to use these for the premium track of Go Battle League on top of the above.

What to avoid buying in Pokemon Go

All standard consumables, such as Poke Balls or Potions

I am of the opinion you should never buy standard Poke Balls. If Niantic wanted to sell them they could at least make them better types of ball, i.e great or ultra. Poke balls are just a straight rip off.

If you live near a stop, just try to spin it more frequently. Check it after each few Pokemon captures, or set a timer to spin it every so often for one hour a day. Working them in as a habit can help a lot.

A Pokeball in Pokemon Origins — Pokeballs are a hugely important part of the series, but lets not get ripped off for them, shall we?
Credit: Bulbapedia

If you don’t live near any stops or gyms to be able to spin for basic supplies, use a service like /r/PokemonGoFriends to expand your friends list a bit, or possibly a lot. Regular gifts really should not be underestimated.

While a single gift might not be worth a whole lot, opening the limit each day can provide you with plenty of mixed items, including restoratives such as potions, revives, alongside all variants of Pokeball from standard to Ultras.

Rocket Radars

You can earn these through 6 standard Team Go Rocket encounters – it’ll take a little time, but it’s free. And the rewards of a single Radar are rarely, if ever, going to be worth 4 days of coins. You can probably earn a Rocket Radar manually faster than that.

Only ever purchase if you know precisely what you’re doing with these, pricetag is simply too high to merit it.

Single Incubators

If you want Incubators, just save up and gun for the Adventure Box in all honesty. That’ll net you a significant discount on the price of Super Incubators and provide some extras too.

Simply put, never buy. Incubators are effective ways to access Pokemon Go’s Lootbox like egg system with less time between hatches – but whether or not you like the system, don’t get dragged into the hype of the next egg being better, or you’ll never have free coins to use on anything else.

Team Medallions

This one is pretty simple, only buy these if you want to swap Team. Otherwise don’t buy them – this is without covering that they cost 1000 Coins.

Pokemon Go Team Medallion — A Team Medallion. Seriously, don’t buy them unless you’re swapping teams. Source: Bulbapedia

The more mixed bag options

Bundles – Special Box

3 x Premium Battle Pass
2 x Incense
1 Super Incubator
30 x Poke Ball

If you simply add up the values of the individual items, then yes, this does become worthwhile. With that said, by so doing you are either agreeing that you think a single incubator is worth 200 coins, or that 30 x Poke balls is worth over 100 coins.

The components of this bundle are simply better off purchased elsewhere in most cases – or in the case of Poke balls, better off not purchased at all.

But, if you do happen to need all of the things available here all at once on short notice and have just shy of 500 coins to burn… well it kinda does the job?

Lure Modules

And I do intend to group all these together here, so just to clarify, this topic refers to all of the following:

1 Lure module for 100 Coins
8 Lure modules for 680 Coins
1 Glacial Lure for 200 Coins
1 Mossy Lure for 200 Coins
1 Magnetic Lure for 200 Coins

Basic lure modules are, for the majority of players, not worth the cost. If you have a lot to spend on the game, maybe that changes.

As for the type lures, such as Glacial or Magnetic – these get a bit more credit as they can be used to evolve specific Pokemon. That said, that credit is lost immediately because they’re double the standard price.

It is nice that lures act as cooperative Pokemon Spawners while they last, but for the individual player its hard to advocate for buying them beyond just getting the evolutions you yourself need.

Leafeon in the Pokemon Anime — Leafeon is a great Pokemon that you’ll need a mossy lure to obtain in Pokemon Go, but outside of that, would you buy a mossy lure again?
Credit: The Pokemon Company

Star Pieces and Lucky Eggs

And finally, on to the brief boost consumables. I have no doubt that these are worthwhile under specific circumstances or in some scenarios with enough setup to maximise the value of the effect.

With that said however, paying 80 or 100 coins – coins from 2 days of Gym ownership – for a one-off 30 minute boost is not something I can condone to the average player as a great idea.

The bundles of 500 coins for 8 Lucky eggs or 640 coins for 8 Star Pieces are a little bit better, but still not worthwhile to the average player as far as I can see.

If you only need a few of these to try some mad-cap stardust or exp farm idea you have, you can go for that idea – but you do get a fair few of these for free just clearing out Special Researches and claiming the rewards.

At best, both bundles buy you 4 total hours of coverage for at least 10 days worth of coins. I do not think that is a worthwhile trade – though in some cases and in some events it is entirely possible a scenario could merit running that many expensive consumables in succession.

Exercise some discretion with these, in other words. Excessive use will simply drain your entire passive coin income as a F2P player – to the extent that I’d simply say avoid buying them entirely as F2P unless you have a very specific plan in mind.

Is that everything?

Yes, I think we’ve covered just about the entire store in this What to buy in Pokemon Go article by now.

I hope you found this to be useful to you, Trainers – maybe you can finally save up enough coins spare to expand your Pokemon storage so Ditto and Pikachu don’t have to share a bunk with the savings this article makes you.

With that said, that’ll be all for this piece on what to buy in Pokemon Go – If you’d like to read more, you can find more articles by me here, and more Pokemon content in general here.

Pokemon Go: What to buy with your hard-earned Coins