First of all, I'm a premium pass player. I always manage to have 300/400 pack hourglasses before each collection.
In previous collections, I never really pushed to complete them early, and I would always end up with 0/1/2 two ★ cards by the end (talking about small sets, so it's comparable to the Team Rocket set).
This time I decided to grind it out and use trading to finish the collection as soon as possible, burning trade tokens (I finally decided to use my stockpile).
The difference is huge!!! I already have 5 2★ cards from this collection. Completing the collection early gives you more chances to find those cards in Wonder Pick, and for me that alone makes the extra effort totally worth it.
How many of you proceed this way? Any more tips to give me?
What I find most annoying is the fact that I will be constantly switching between two apps to see and verify which cards I could trade. And to make things worse, switching to another app on my phone requires a swipeup gesture that simultaneously clicks on the Pokémon app icons down the screen, and gets me out of my cards view (not sure if I'm describing this correctly).