YouTuber finds shiny Moltres after trading Pokémon Blue to Crystal

YouTuber RaidAway discovered a shiny Moltres after trading the bird from Pokémon Blue into Pokémon Crystal. Moltres appears once per save in Blue, shows up late at Victory Road, and if you fail to catch it you don’t get another chance in that playthrough.

Shininess can reveal itself after trading because Generation II determined shiny status from a Pokémon’s Individual Values. Those IVs existed in the first games but only gained the visible, alternate-color trait in the sequels, so a monster caught in Red or Blue can become shiny when transferred.

In Crystal the Moltres swapped its original yellow body for a pink one, making the statistical quirk obvious—something RaidAway couldn’t have seen while the bird remained in Blue. He posted on X that he was working on a Crystal Living Dex when he stumbled across the shiny.

Shiny hunting is usually a lengthy, repetitive process, so finding one by accident is uncommon, and finding one as rare as Moltres is even more unusual.

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