Pin Collection Organization

[Adele0904]

I had sooo many personal pins and traders. How do you guys best organize your collections? I'm always looking for inspiration!

 

[starry_solo]

Mine are all in the closet, lol.
Some are in pin bags; some are in boxes; some are in frames; unfortunately, no where to display them.

 

[TheMickeyMouseRules]

My collection gets put into zip binders as they come in. My ultimate goal is to get them framed tho (I am very behind.) I also use bins for the boxed pins in my collection.

I store keepers by color I associate with the collection. Red binders for Mickey Mouse, Black binders for Star Wars, Purple for Maleficent, blue for Moana etc. Inside are various sized baseball card sleeves. This is a 'temporary' storage until I have time to frame them.

My traders are mostly in labeled stack-able plastic bins. The first bins I bought are normal seal, but lately I have started buying air-tight bins. At some point I plan to replace all the bins with air-tight bins. The bins range in size so I can fit single carded pins up to boxed pins/sets. I sort by pin source into the bins and label the bins as such. Loungefly blind boxes, Loungefly non blind, uncas, park pins, disney store pins, DSSH, etc. I have 5 or so zip binders where I rotate traders in and out to take to pin events. To keep my mystery pins together I use bubble mailers (received from mail trades). I cut down one side of the bubble mailers and poke the pins through the bubble mailer. I can then stack the bubble mailers and the pins are protected. Learned this trick from another pin trader. It also is a great re-use for the multitude of bubble mailers I receive.

 

[Ajk]

Other than a handful of framed sets, mine are all in the black official pin collecting bags. Those are organized by collection themes (NBC, AiW, Villains, etc) with a tag on them indicating what they have. Some of the bags are mixed themes or things I don’t really think of as a collection but I guess kind of are like annual event pins, etc.

My traders are in similar bags - one for oe/hm and one (currently two) for LEs. Those are not particularly organized beyond that.

 

[Sithathoriunet]

I've got some of my collection on cork boards and in open frames hanging behind my bedroom door. The rest are in random binders (and a bag) that I've picked up over the years. The first were a binder and a bag created by Disney for a particular pin set (Magical Musical Moments), then I got a binder for some plastic pin display pages from Amazon that I was given for Christmas one year, then I discovered and purchased some Pinfolios, though those pages haven't made in into a binder yet, they're sitting in a box in front of my closet. My traders are in a zipped Pinfolio binder, with the carded pins living in a Mickey Mouse metal lunch box displayed in my bedroom.

 

[Adele0904]

My collection gets put into zip binders as they come in. My ultimate goal is to get them framed tho (I am very behind.) I also use bins for the boxed pins in my collection.

I store keepers by color I associate with the collection. Red binders for Mickey Mouse, Black binders for Star Wars, Purple for Maleficent, blue for Moana etc. Inside are various sized baseball card sleeves. This is a 'temporary' storage until I have time to frame them.

My traders are mostly in labeled stack-able plastic bins. The first bins I bought are normal seal, but lately I have started buying air-tight bins. At some point I plan to replace all the bins with air-tight bins. The bins range in size so I can fit single carded pins up to boxed pins/sets. I sort by pin source into the bins and label the bins as such. Loungefly blind boxes, Loungefly non blind, uncas, park pins, disney store pins, DSSH, etc. I have 5 or so zip binders where I rotate traders in and out to take to pin events. To keep my mystery pins together I use bubble mailers (received from mail trades). I cut down one side of the bubble mailers and poke the pins through the bubble mailer. I can then stack the bubble mailers and the pins are protected. Learned this trick from another pin trader. It also is a great re-use for the multitude of bubble mailers I receive.

I love the color coding!

 

[hopemax]

I've been collecting since 1990, so my collection is very, very large. So my answer is "anything and everything." When my collection was smaller, I framed a lot of stuff or put pins on cork boards. But I don't have enough wall space to frame everything. Everything else has plusses and minuses. I have a lot of pin albums, or binders with the pages you used to be able to buy. It's easy to add new pins, but the pages twist and warp due to the wait. I have about a dozen pin bags (with corrugated plastic) with hold my Cast Lanyard / Hidden Mickey pins and a few other things. Pins that are still on card, or without a permanent home are stored either in plastic storage containers I have gotten at Ikea or Costco. Or in boxes meant to hold baseball / trading cards.

I have a couple "new" solutions I am trying. First, are pin bags from an Instagram seller named Daisypins which uses Kraken foam in their products. I have a couple of their bags, and purchased 4 more in pre-order. These bags seem great for securely, holding a large number of pins. However, they are not cheap. Also, my holy grail has been a system where I could store pins on some sort of board and then swap them into a frame seasonally (for holiday pins) or as the mood strikes. Michaels and other places have standard shadow boxes or deep frames, but what to put the pins on has eluded me. I know I could cut or make something, but that was too much work for the volume I have. However, another DPF person recommended a completely surprising solution, and I have done a test, and I think it will work out! I am planning on writing a Guide about this solution, so stay tuned!