PIN & POP Are you a Trade Offer sender or receiver?

For those members who participate in Pin & Pop Trade Arcades and have tables, do you send out a lot of trade offers or do you tend to wait for trade offers? Follow up question, not covered by the poll, but which offers do you find are more successful, either in quality or quantity, trades sent to you or trades you send?

I am a sender for grails and some ISOs. I'm trying to do better at making offers, but find it difficulty to find good offers, as I prefer to offer ISOs and not stabs in the dark. So most of my completed trades are pins that were listed on my table.

I also try to offer ISOs to trade, but I’ll send others for pins I really want if they match the traders preferences and they are open to them.

I have accepted quite a few non-ISOs that I love, and I’m more prone to search for an offer to accept if my pin is a grail for them.

I make lots of offers (rough est. for Nov2025 TA is 100) and also receive lots of offers on my tabled pins (may also be in about 100 offers... but this one is harder to figure out post TA). My offers always result in slightly more trades than my table.

EX: This Nov 2025 TA has resulted in 25 trades from my tabled pins and 34 trades from offers I sent out.

I'm a mixed bag. I love getting offers and make offers on pins I think won't be made on pins for my table. There were a lot of grail pins for me this round that I tried for and denied. Sometimes I put pin up on the table I'm unsure about and enjoy seeing what type of offers are made so I can better judge what I feel is a fair offer for both parties in the future. There were a lot of tough choices this round.

How's everyone determine what to put up on the table?

I find it easier to look at the offers sent to me. I don't like to make offers on other's pins, but I do
sometimes.

dznycrzyfmly said:

I'm a mixed bag. I love getting offers and make offers on pins I think won't be made on pins for my table. There were a lot of grail pins for me this round that I tried for and denied. Sometimes I put pin up on the table I'm unsure about and enjoy seeing what type of offers are made so I can better judge what I feel is a fair offer for both parties in the future. There were a lot of tough choices this round.

How's everyone determine what to put up on the table?

Click to expand...

I like looking at the number of people looking for a pin versus the number of people offering it for trade. It’s very time-consuming though.

dznycrzyfmly said:

I'm a mixed bag. I love getting offers and make offers on pins I think won't be made on pins for my table. There were a lot of grail pins for me this round that I tried for and denied. Sometimes I put pin up on the table I'm unsure about and enjoy seeing what type of offers are made so I can better judge what I feel is a fair offer for both parties in the future. There were a lot of tough choices this round.

How's everyone determine what to put up on the table?

Click to expand...

I try to populate mine with others ISO's. Then after a while I saw alot of offers coming in on a specific pin - then it dawned on me that's due to the TradeQuest. Then I started adding TQ pins to my ISO's in case someone is interested.

I try for a few pins at the beginning of the arcade, but then I wait for for offers to come in. If I have time I may look through the pins I was interested in (I star those before the Arcade) and offer something.

I have four levels of pins I am searching for: grails, iso from incomplete series (e.g. Countdown to the Millennium, monthly Cuckoo Clock) or mystery/blind sets, fits a random niche collection(Coffee, computers, etc), and other(I like it for some reason but I am not actively trying for it).

The most successful trades offers I received are for mystery/blind pins. Half of the pins I traded for are mystery pins.

The least successful are the ones where there is a rarity gap (e.g. offering an o.e. for a l.e. 300).

For trades I offer, it feels random. I try to use iso matches, and then interests, but some traders are waiting for the best offer (and wait all weekend), which as someone trading to complete sets and series can be frustrating. Other traders don’t accept iso and I don’t know why, although I suspect it is similar to why I do not always accept isos. I do not accept isos when: it is pending in a trade (I received offers with pins that I should receive shortly), there is a rarity gap (I might want your o.e. mystery pin but I am not trading it for my l.e. 50 Tinkerbell), I prefer to hold onto it to finish a mystery/blind set.

This trade arcade was different for me. I was busy this weekend and could not spend a lot of time with it.

Usually I look at the traders that are wanted by many people, then I look at the trade arcade and I try to find pins that fit it (I did not bother this time, I have some Winter Around the World and Christmas mystery pins I wish I had time to enter into P&P), I usually put some mystery pins on the table if I do not have enough from the two previous categories.

If I have time I will look through other tables thoroughly (if I don’t I glance at my isos and move on), and I may make adjustments to my table if I see a lot of a particular pin that I have on my table.

Before the event I go through all the tables and mark the pins I'm interested in getting, not just pins on my ISO list. Once the event starts I'll go through the tagged pins first. Then I usually go through all the tables marked ISOs for them. Once done reset the visited marking and go through a second time.

Pidge said:

I like looking at the number of people looking for a pin versus the number of people offering it for trade. It’s very time-consuming though.

Click to expand...

Oooo I do that too! Lots of things to consider when setting up a table!

I'm probably more of a sender, especially since I'm a month-to-month VIP and don't always have a table. Anybody who has my ISO and they have mine will get an offer (if they are comparable). I will also send to folks that I don't have their ISO but I do have pins that match their interests. I never send offers that are neither their ISOs or interests. I wouldn't even know where to begin.

oh my, I guess I love to trade. I review every table before the arcade begins. I star the ones I'm interested in. I add any of those I'm seriously interested in to my ISOs so the other trader sees I'm in ISO of the pin. I start off the arcade making offers on the pins I'm most interested in and then I field offers I've received. Some arcades it feels like most of my trades are ones I initiated, but other arcades it feels the opposite. I seem to roughly average around 20 trades per arcade (more in Happy Haunts) but I usually only have 1/3rd or so of pins traded from my table so perhaps I'm not great at setting up my table. After the first day I often will reset the tables and give another review. I go through the tables that are seeking ISOs from me to see if they have anything of reasonable interest and similar value that I can offer to give them their ISO. I'm a bit conflicted on the "grails" because everyone has a different standard for grails. I don't like the reward system for giving grails. Because I'm very choosy about what I list as a grail I feel I am disadvantaged by other traders who list lots of pins as grails. Also, I think the idea of "no-guilt trading/being able to say no" goes away with this grail reward recognition, I don't think that is what Jenn/Chris intend but that is how it impacts me. With that said I did give someone a pin that they listed in the notes of the their table that they needed to complete the set, an LE monthly pin from 2024, that was sitting in my traders even though they didn't have anything for my collection.

I am definitely one of those people that uses the Grail option as "set completion." With almost 5000 ISOs, I definitely need a rating system so other people have an idea on what I'm most likely to accept.

My extensive ISO list is also a problem with reviewing tables. Up until a couple TAs ago, I didn't have my new Hidden Disney ISOs listed (only older sets), and I would end up with about 400 ISOs to look through. This one, with all the HD pins I had over 1200 pins starred! When I went to review tables, I didn't know which page to go to find the pin I wanted to actually offer now. I did a little reverse searching... I went to the Sneak Peak page, selected a Tag to see what pins were listed in the TA, clicked on the ones I was ISO there, then clicked on the TA icon to see which people had it on tables and make offers that way. But it was also time consuming and a lot of clicks. I also like to make offers on old stuff that doesn't look like it generated a lot of interest from other people. I will look at the number of offers received on a pin as a guide, and this alternate way of reviewing wouldn't work with that. Anyway, this time I didn't make a lot of offers. I think I'm going to have to just not star new HD pins prior to the start of TA.