The Community Needs to Know - Pokemon VM Bible

Hello Reddit,

I want to start by apologizing. I held this information after studying my local machine and gathering information from other select people who watched other machines in various parts of SoCal and felt it was too dangerous to put out there. But with the state of the hobby as it is right now, I cannot share the information to parents and real collectors fast enough so I think it's better I just put it out there and make sure this information is known by all.

Here is my 'Bible' on Pokemon Vending Machines.

Key Principals:

1. Machines are almost always stocked and currently programmed to drip out product across anywhere from 3-5 days after a restock. Just because you see it say 'Sold Out' It does not mean it actually is sold out. The best way to confirm is to linger around a machine for 30-60 minutes to see if anyone hits on the machine.

2. Machines will always restock at the 30-second mark on the minute. This means you should always wait for your clock to hit 31-seconds after the minute before tapping the screen. The machine has to be in the screensaver for it to properly load product. If you pass the timestamp without being in screensaver you must cycle the machine into a screensaver anytime after you've passed a timestamp to see if it loaded new product.

3. Machines are programmed to drop at a specific timestamps within the hour or half hour. There are many forms of this but the simplest is the half hour increment. For Example: A machine could be programmed to always drop at XX:12:30 and XX:42:30. Occasionally based on rounding errors in software I have seen it flicker +/- 1 minute around the timestamp but for the most part it will stick to it.
TIMESTAMPS TYPICALLY DO NOT SHIFT UNTIL AN UPDATE TO PROGRAM OR A RESTOCK.
See Programs below for more details.

4. Machines will occasionally roll a 'dead drop'. A dead drop is a timestamp where no product stocks. For example: A machine could have reloaded 2 booster bundles at 4:12:30 and then two singles at 4:42:30 but then no product at 5:12:30. This happens on approximately 20% of drops and I believe it has to do with the empty lanes in a machine being 'rolled'.

5. Machines have peak periods to drop. There are hours typically 11-6p that the machine is primed to drop bigger products and outside those times where it spools down to an off-peak state. This might not be true for all vending machines but it is true for my vending machines that I've received data on in SoCal.

Programs:
There are a variety of programs that machines follow:

1. The 30-min Cycle: This is the most basic program and its a trickle of products every 30-min. Currently most of the Orange County machines operate on the 30-min cycle. Remember, these programs follow timestamps if you dont understand what timestamps are please do some research.

2. The 60-min Cycle: This is similar to 30-min but instead drops every hour. The most distinct characterstic for a machine on a 1-hour cycle is that it will typically always drop 2x of the same product. Sometimes its separated into 1x, 1x transactions but it almost always drops 2x of the product if available.

3. The Shiny Program: This is typically 2-3 hours between drops and it will "glitch drop" 15-22 items at once. This hasn't been observed for a good two months now in the OC.

4. The Block Program: This program was active in the previous two weeks for OC. The block program chops up the clock into 30-min blocks. For Example: 7:01 - 7:30 is a 'block', and 7:31-8:00 is another 'block'. Each block has a chance to drop on typically two timestamps within the block. Usually these stamps are determined by the ending number, like ":X1/:X4" which means the machine will drop at any timestamp ending in 1 or 4 within the block and that timer will reset at the start of the next block.

I have much more information that I can't fit succinctly into a single document but hopefully this will confirm some of your theories.