Last weekend there was an issue at DLR with a person telling people to go into the store and buy multiple pins for one of his. A cast member came out and made an announcement that if that happened one more time all traders at Westward Ho would have to leave. As soon as the cast member left, said trader asked another person to go buy more pins.....It isn't much of a deterrent. I feel that our trading days in the parks are numbered due to this mentality...
This isn't really what I'm talking about. It's not a policy - it's just some dude making a heavy-handed, frankly way-over-the-top threat. It also doesn't take into consideration the concessions that could be made if asking people to buy pins was accepted behavior, either.
If the posted rules were something along the lines "You can ask people to buy pins to trade you; all in-park binder trading must be done in this area of Westward Ho; no predatory trading, there's a CM standing in the approved pin trading area; he'll kick you out of the park and/or cancel your annual pass if you screw someone over super-hard," it'd be a totally different ballgame. Making a vague threat towards all pin traders in the area, one time, verbally, isn't going to be effective. Vague threats won't solve this problem - policy and strategy on the park's behalf will.
Erudolf - You're literally comparing theft to profitable trading. I'm not sure that's the comparison you were trying to make, but yeah. Honestly, I think if someone is at a Disney park on vacation and is already paying hundreds, perhaps thousands of dollars to be there, taking a -10 on a single pin isn't a huge problem. We can definitely agree to disagree, though.
Personally, I'm basing my opinion on my own perspective - if there's a pin I really want, I'll -10 for it. I'm relatively new to the hobby, and my budget for pin trading (and everything else in life right now! haha) is pretty small, but yeah. It's ten bucks.
Just to shift gears, another thing that can help solve this problem is simply speaking up. Flat out, if you're watching someone mize 100 bucks off tourists over and over, ESPECIALLY if they're pretending to be someone's sick grandmother, just go ahead and ruin their business. Let the victim know before they make the trade, "Hey, you know that's not exactly a totally fair trade, value-wise, right?" If they don't seem to care, then that's fine. But you'd be surprised at how often someone will respond and ask "Really? What are [x items] worth?" and then change their decision appropriately. There's no law that says we as traders have to put up with that stuff, and the tourists can always return the pins (I think - correct me if I'm wrong on that bit).
-JD