Hello all,
I have some hidden mickey pins that I am not quite sure of. They all have the official pin trading stamped on the back BUT they dont have the starburst or "seal" I guess you would call it around the mickey head...are these real? Also how come it seems no one on Ebay has pictures of the back of the pins?
A note about the starburst, or lack of one. Starbursts have not been around since the beginning. They are a more recent addition to the back of the pin, they are on the 2009 HM pins and later but not earlier, I don't think.
Can't help you with DL pins, and I would like to know more about the differences of Disneyland pins myself. As for the WDW ones. I can tell you that the blue lanyard counterfeits I have seen had the half moon where the lanyard meets the Mickey filled in with blue. Placed side by side with the authentic one the blues were slightly different. I looked at the back of mine, and the starburst logo is high on the blue, lower on the pink, high on the other colors. I can't guarantee mine are real, either, but my Dad collects 3 sets (for me, another friend, and himself). I then take a look at all three and can usually see which pins look "off." Then I can go look in the display at Pin Traders and see what it is supposed to look like. The tricky thing, is that the pins are made at multiple factories, so there can be minor differences just because of that. But the blue one also looks "streaky" to me, which can be a sign of a fake, because it didn't go through the final finishing stage.
The things I look for: Bad colors. When the counterfeits try to do yellow, it comes out more with a greenish tint. I think with the fish bags, the tops have a yellowish top on the counterfeits but they are supposed to be grey. Unfortunately, Bubbles looks to me to be a little greenish, and your tops look "not grey" to me, but I don't know if it was lighting/camera issue. Also, I've noticed that colors are repeated on other pins in the same series. So in the 2010 WDW HM's I noticed that the purplish/pink of the SMT Robot matched the purplish/pink on the Andy Warhol Mickey Squares, so I was able to pull out a bad square when I noticed it didn't match.
A friend told me one of the things she noticed, and it's visible in the Princess gem pins. But I don't know how "reliable" a test it is. Ok, look at the "Official Disney Pin Trading Logo" on the Belle pin, and look at the word "official." See how the O and the L are in the Mickey ears, but look at the Snow White pin. Official is not in the ears at all. The counterfeits are supposed to be the ones with the Official being too long and taking up ear space. There is a note on Pinpics that says that the heart is supposed to be completely symmetrical on the real one, but the counterfeit is not.
And as always, sometimes the biggest key is where they came from. If you purchased a cheap lot on ebay, I would be wary. Especially, if the seller seems to have a lot of identical pins.
