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Help a Newcomer ID Scrapper vs Counterfeits

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Help a Newcomer ID Scrapper vs Counterfeits
JASBG

JASBG

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Before I even get to the meat of this post, I feel a little story is in order...

My wife and I started pin collecting roughly a year ago when we went to WDW Magic Kingdom and got our first lanyards, a few rack pins, and some Hidden Mickey pouches (hope I am getting all the lingo down, just found this community yesterday :) ) We quickly got hooked on these little buggers. Just this past weekend we were at WDW Magic Kingdom again (for the third time since we started collecting). We went to the Trading Post to pick up some more pins (the ones we had already we wanted to keep). $60 later is when it really hit me how expensive this hobby can be. So naturally I thought "Well why dont we take a look on eBay and see if we can find someone trying to sell a lot for a good deal."

100 pins for $50, what a great deal! And they all came in neat little baggies! (I know what you all are thinking now lol)

So here I am, sitting on my living room floor with a pile of pins scattered around, searching for my newest keepers. Thats when I noticed something weird; a bouncing tigger pin with no Pin Trading logo on the back. So i thought to myself "Weird, maybe its a fake...cheep dollar store pin or something"

So I go onto google and search how to find counterfeit pins and now here I am, reading all about scrappers and fakes from you knowledgeable folks.

My eBay seller moves 500+ pins a day, sells them all for under 50 cents a pic, packages them in small baggies, and posts generic pictures for the listings. All these factors point that the pins i got are scrappers/counterfeits. Bummer right?

Now I am going through my new pins and 'practicing' my authentic identification skills and was wondering a few things :)
 
First:



Here you can see four pins from the same set. The first from left to right was obtained from a Hidden Mickey pouch purchased at WDW, the second was traded with a CM, and the two came with the eBay pins (note: the backs are all the same color in person). The second one has the little silver emblem on the chest which pinpics says is a counterfeit (suposed to have a little colored symbol). Other than that, #2,#3, and #4also have the reverse border on the edge. However I read somewhere that this reverse border is starting to show up on authentic pins as well (these pins are from 2013). Another thing I noted is the thickness. To the eye they look identical, but when measured (I am an auto tech and have fancy measuring tools hehe) #1 was 1.6mm thick and the other were all about 1.5mm. Could this be a tell tail sign that those three are all counterfeit? Do authentic pins usually have a common known thickness?

Next:



Next, this Goofy pin. Of note is the messed up Hidden Mickey ears on the front. No waffling on the back, so I dont know if there is anything there that is a red flag. As far as the ears go, is that something that happens with scrappers or counterfeits?

Last:



This one looks great (at lease to me, again I dont know much haha) the only thing I found was a divot in the paint on the Navy strip (yes, it is navy, stupid camera). That would make it a scrapper right? or could it still be a counterfeit?


Thanks again in advance for helping. I am hoping that at least some are Disney scrapper and not all counterfeit. I know it doesnt matter to you more seasoned traders but I wouldnt mind hanging on to a few scrappers (for person amusement, no trading) of pins I like and trying to replace them with authentics down the road. As far as my eBay seller goes, I am going to leave negative feedback so hopefuly people think twice before buying. I am going to keep all the pins and eat the $50, I would hate to return them and enable him to just resell them to someone else. Rather get them off the market.
 
Hi so I recently picked up this hobby too and unfortunately made the same mistake you did and bought 25 pins on eBay for $12. Probably should've known it was too good to be true but whatever. After doing some research on here and identifying my own pins as Scrappers or counterfeits I can tell you that while your mad hatter hat looks pretty good and real, if you look at the back of the pin you can see the little bumps on either side of the poker. On real pins, those bumps should me much closer together to the poker like this
 
6101a4e6ba21ca318397f8cbad39f2f7.jpg
not sure if you can tell but I got this pin at Disneyland a few weeks ago and the bumps are closer to the middle poker than your mad hatter hat
 
Hm, good eye. Do the authentic pins always have them closer? Im not home right now but I will have to take a look at my others when i get home.
 
I believe they do. I'm no expert honestly I just started this hobby a couple weeks ago so I'm only going off knowledge I've gathered from this website
 
To address a few of your questions:
1. The reverse border on the edges lets you know they are fake. Except for a few exceptions, the only pins that are legitimately printed with the reverse border are some WDI pins and some DSF pins (once in a while there will be a pin set, like the Small World character and background mystery set, that are printed like this). A reverse border on a hidden mickey always tells you it's counterfeit.
2. The hidden mickey head on HM pins is frequently a little bit weirdly-shaped, this isn't necessarily a sign of a fake. Pins without any kind of border are the hardest to identify if they are real or not- if in doubt, don't trade it.
3. Paint dips frequently occur in fakes, but unfortunately it is not uncommon to see them in real pins either (especially in more recent releases, it seems the quality control is going down). This alone can't tell you definitely one way or the other. Another poster mentioned the nubs on the back- unless a pin is known to have nubs and you have a known authentic pin to compare them to, this isn't necessarily a surefire way of identifying fakes either. Disney uses about four different manufacturers to make their pins and many pins have no nubs, one, or ones that are placed differently. Since we know that the hat pin set that this hatter hat comes from has been faked, and I do actually have an authentic version of this pin where the nubs are closer to the pin back, it's most likely that this is a fake pin.

In the future when you need traders, post here in the "Wants" forum. There are a lot of members here who can sell you authentic Disney pins for trading for between $2-$4 each. It's probably the safest way to get traders. :)
 
On your goofy pin, one of the ears is black and the other is the same color as the background.
That one is counterfeit.
 
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