Pokémon A few questions about secret bases

[roseflower]

So I`m playing Omega Ruby and started collecting the secret base flags. I hope someone can help with my questions:
1. When I connect to the internet with the PSS I always get 24 new passes but shouldn`t that be 30? And it says that it updates something, what exactly is updated?
2. There is a sparkling silver flag in one of the secret bases, other flags are silver without the sparkling. What does that mean?
3. A player in a secret base gave me a few flags, but that never happened again? Is it rare?

 

[JSS]

Hey!

1. When you check the passer-by updates you get new mirage spots and new secret bases, and probably more BuzzNav messages too. For me the number of passer-by updates vary. Sometimes it's 30, other times 29 or 28 or some other number like that. Here's a tip, if you don't like the passer-by updates that you got just quit the game without saving and try again. This works for mirage spots as well.
2. I think that the sparkling means they reached maximum rank (Platinum) by collecting 1000 flags, but I'm not 100% sure.
3. I think they only give you flags if you asked them to be one of your secret base buddies and only if they collected any flags that day.

Hope this helped.

 

[roseflower]

Thank you very much JSS , this is so helpful