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Why/How did you get started in Pin Trading?

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Why/How did you get started in Pin Trading?
Cicada

Cicada

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What/how was it that got everyone here interested in collecting or selling/trading Disney Pins?

let's hear it! :eek:
 
For me its a simple story -

Had been seeing my partner for a about 7 months and because I have a short temper from time to time, he called me Grumpy..and I wasnt to chuffed with that at first (but who would be) and he suggested I get a hobby as I was getting bored stuck inside the house (as my partner lived in ireland and I lived in the UK) and when he visited me, we went to look at the disney store as there isnt one in Ireland and when we was in the queue we spotted a Grumpy Keyring as well as the Grumpy pin..and he bought me the Keyring.

About 2 weeks went by and I was in the disney store after looking at pins online and I was with my friend who bought me the grumpy pin for my 22nd birthday and I had a proper search online and found the manchester pin group and got talking to people on the facebook group and I guess thats my story on how I got into pins.

And to think over a year later...Im still nicknamed Grumpy by my partner :p
 
Believe it or not I never thought I'd get into pin trading until I WON pins on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire - Play It!" at Hollywood Studios. I got 5 pins and a lanyard for free so I figured I should at least give it a shot. It was all downhill from there. ;)
 
We went to WDW last Christmas time frame and our daughter bought Debby a lanyard and a few pins. While walking through the various parks cast members would come up to her and hold out their lanyards. She thought it was quite strange and just smiled at them. The next day we were purchasing some items in the Mainstreet Emporium and noticed that the cast member at the register had a pin that had PT on it. We asked what it meant and she told us all about pin trading, especially "hidden Mickeys". We spent a lot of money over the next few days buying pins that we could then trade to cast members for their hidden mickeys and that got us started.

In April of this year we discovered pin buying and in June Debby made her first PinPics trade. Since then our collection has reached over 2000 pins. I guess you'd say we are definitely hooked!
 
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Very cool topic! Back in 2001, my sister took my husband & I, along with herself and her daughter to Disneyland to celebrate her daughter's and my birthdays. At that time, the Haunted Mansion experienced the first Nightmare Before Christmas layover and we were so excited! Bought everything in sight; t-shirts, collectibles AND pins! Needless to say, we celebrate MY birthday every year by buying MY HUSBAND"S pins! That begun our trading year, and because I wanted to play too, I started with Mickey and now Stitch!
 
Mine was back in early 2000 we were at the Disney in Hobart,Indiana
and the Mill Series was released..Larry liked a couple pins..but we came home with the first 10 released
the Cast Member(Manager)told us about Dizpins and Pinpics and it exploded from there
 
My addiction started a little over a year ago. My mother and I traveled down to DLR to visit my cousin and celebrate her daughters birthday. While we were there my mom wanted to know what all the fus was about with the pins, pin trading, and all that fun stuff. She bogh a starter lanyard and began trading wit cast members. I was reluctant to get sucked into the habit...and then I saw the first series of Vinylmationpins (park1) and I had to get the entire set...I went from anti pin to a bigger collector than my mom...and now I am slowly getting my fiance involved, Hahaha. Anyways thats how I got started.

And on a side note I will be at DLR this weekend so I hope to see a bunch of you out there :) Happy Trading!
 
In 1989, when I was 13, I decided I wanted to collect "something" from the places we visited on vacation. That something turned out to be lapel pins. In 1990, the Goodwill Games were in Seattle, and after they were over there was a couple "discount" stores and my parents bought me a lot of the pins for cheap ala Olympic Pin trading. And I mentioned before, my Dad bought me my first two Disneyland pins on a business trip. I got more when I visited DL and WDW in 1995, 1997 & 1998. So when Disney announced Pin Trading in 1999, it was a natural progression. I may be a Disney pin collector, but that is only a part of my larger pin collecting hobby. Although, I own many more Disney pins than I all the rest of my pins combined.
 
In 2003 my uncle was dating someone who was a cast member and also collected pins. One day she showed me her TinkerBell collection and I was amazed by how many pins she had! I was instantly hooked and we spent that summer aquiring handfulls of pins. I became a cast member the next year and began trading with others. The only thing I was disappointed in was that while I had heard of Disney Auctions I was confused on how to purchase any of the pins so I never did.

She had so many pins and would go to the parks constantly to trade but to this day I have never found anyone who knew her and we have lost touch several years ago.
 
Two Disney trips ago, my wife and I wanted something to do between rides/shows, decided to buy a couple of lanyards and some hidden Mickey packs... I found myself pretty motivated to trade since I had a bunch of Princess Mirror HMs around my neck... ;)

I liked that there were a bunch of pins with firefighter themes, dates, and resorts on them, so I really got hooked on the pin quest.
 
In February this year my 14 year old son was telling me about the "cast trading". While at the park I decided to investigate it further.........HOOKED!!!!
 
tyleet87 said:
In 2003 my uncle was dating someone who was a cast member and also collected pins. One day she showed me her TinkerBell collection and I was amazed by how many pins she had! I was instantly hooked and we spent that summer aquiring handfulls of pins. I became a cast member the next year and began trading with others. The only thing I was disappointed in was that while I had heard of Disney Auctions I was confused on how to purchase any of the pins so I never did.

She had so many pins and would go to the parks constantly to trade but to this day I have never found anyone who knew her and we have lost touch several years ago.
Click to expand...
To continue with this story, around the time Gillian started collecting, I got a Sleeping Beauty pin or two. I became a cast member in 2004 and had access to buying cast pins. Since Gillian was still trading and collecting, I began collecting along with her.
 
I have been with my partner for 7 years in this time we have been 3 times to DLRP..... the first time we went i noticed the pins but my other half said they are a wast of money, second time we went "oh dont botther with them" 3rd time we went this October i just bought some and then he wanted some and then we spent the whole 3 days looking round the parks for pins. i found a pin bag for my 18 pins i aquired he said "wast of money you will never need it" until when we got home we went pin crazy my first trade was with Judy AKA tiggermickey who also introduced me to this site and we are still building on our collection but in two months i have gone from 0 pins to 40ish and my partner (mashead2000) has around 25 :) we love it and now just want to go back for pinns ha ha
 
RIDisneyPinGuy said:
Two Disney trips ago, my wife and I wanted something to do between rides/shows, decided to buy a couple of lanyards and some hidden Mickey packs... I found myself pretty motivated to trade since I had a bunch of Princess Mirror HMs around my neck... ;)
Click to expand...
:lol:
 
I've always collected Pins of one form or another, mainly from somewhere I visited, Dolphins or charity pins (in fact I have several thousand non-Disney pins but that is another story).

As I've said elsewhere I got Disney pins the 1st and 2nd time we went to WDW prior to the start of pin trading to add to the collection.

When I knew we were going back in 08 I found TheDibb (a UK Disney forum) and having a browse I found Earthbound's sticky on Pin Trading. He asked my questions and pointed me in the direction of pinpics.

I'm never one to do things by halves so I sourced about 20 pins from a collecting friend of mine before I went and traded every single one mostly for Figgy pins. I also bought every Figgy pin I could find.

Once I got back I wanted to continue but didn't know where to start given I was in the UK and the pins I wanted to collect were in Florida. A couple more qustions to Chris and I found Dizpins. The rest as they say is history.

So thanks Chris for getting me hooked into an extreme side of a hobby I've had for years. There is only 1 problem charity pins tend to be £1 each, Disney pins aren't!
 
I bought an annual pass for DLR in January 2008. (Prior to that I would pass the pin stores and roll my eyes.) But I decided I needed a lanyard to hang my pass on. Well, the lanyard needed some pins, right? So my sister and I wandered the park through five or six visits just trading for "cute" pins with cast members. Then one of my sons asked if I had any hidden mickeys. "Hidden Mickeys? What are those?" So the next trip to the park I asked a cast member at one of the pin carts about hidden mickeys. She explained what they were and showed me pictures of the new hidden mickeys for that month (B&W silhouettes). Then the hunt began. My sister and I each had our set of silhouettes within a week or so, but I was obsessed. Hit a snag when I found out about scrappers (disappointing) but continued undaunted. I actually acquired a complete set of DLR and WDW cast lanyards (current at the time) but had already switched my attention to Sleeping Beauty pins. The WDW cast lanyards were the first to be sold/traded off. Then DLR let Timm go, some of the more rare early cast lanyards started to get knocked off (kites and such) and disapointment kind of turned to disgust. The final straw, so to speak, was when all the 2010 cast lanyards at DLR were released at once. So much of the fun of trading was going to the park early in the month, finding out what the new set to look for was and heading off on a new hunt. (heavy sigh... still miss it)

So now I have really narrowed my focus to Sleeping Beauty (the movie) related pins. I am not a completest by any stretch. Pins/scenes that have nothing to do with the movie rarely make the cut for the collection. Briar Rose (make it gray) is my favorite, followed closely by blue. I do have plenty of pink in the collection though, along with Maleficent and the three fairies.

Most of the pins on my "wants" list now are not around much. Currently thinning the traders again because I have far too many, especially considering I have had no luck trading for Sleeping Beauty pins with them.

So that's my story. The thing that keeps me around (at DLR and on the boards) are all the great people I've met along the way.
 
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