Here is my haul from my 3 day trip (+ scrooge and an older goofy) and let me just say it was hard. In hindsight, I wish I had given up some pin hunting time for something else, but as an Alice, Stitch, and Goofy fan I am happy to have found what I did. (I may have also scared a guy I think was in training, who had the first Alice pin I found. I was very excited when I spotted it.)
The bottom row is all for trade for anyone looking. I would love to finish up the alice collection and I also collect stitch.
Also, on the scrooge, thoughts on whether he is legit ? There are scrapper warning for him, but the paint and edges all look good. He's an older pin so I am not sure if he would have had a mickey pattern on the back or not. He was actually being used to anchor a ribbon around a pin board and I asked if I could trade for him.
My observations on pin hunting are below the pics.
Here is what I observed:
As we know the hidden mickey's a very hard to find. Most cast member told me they went quickly. At my resort, one member told me she knew a bag of them had come in, but didn't know why they weren't on out anywhere yet.
AK continued to give me the most luck with pin hunting. I grabbed 5 of my pins, which is almost half, from there.
It's been about 2.5 years since my last trip but I noticed fewer cast members with lanyards, and fewer boards. I was surprised to find AK and Epcot no longer had books at guest relations.
I noticed a lot more cast members with mystery pins - some even had their entire lanyard as mystery pins, so you were taking a gamble. When I told a few I was specifically hunting for the new Alice pins, they were nice enough to tell me none of their mystery pins were those pins.
In short, I think disney is trying to control the pin trading issues, but it has also made it harder, especially for us non frequent visitors to find and complete sets in a trip. I don't when I'll go back and if I can finish my sets!
Side note/rant:
Can the CMs just get rid of the triangle WDW flag pins ? They've been faked like crazy. No one collects them, and they are EVERYWHERE. Do the pin traders a favor and get them off the CMs and boards and replace them with some newer pins. Seriously, I bet a quick audit would turn these up on more boards, pins books, and cast members than not.