Best Way to Acquire Good Traders?

Hey everyone,

So I'd really like to get back into trading again, but as someone who doesn't live close to the parks, I'm looking for recommendations on the best way to pick up some solid traders so I can work on my collection a bit more without breaking the bank. I appreciate any help you guys can give me!

Unless you live near the Disney Soda Fountain in Hollywood or near one of the Disney parks or have access to WDI pins either via a cast member friend or by attending a D23 event, you're probably better off just buying the pins you want rather than buying secondary market pins as traders.

But either way - buying good traders or buying collection pins directly - pin collecting is not an inexpensive hobby unless all you want is to trade from lanyards in the parks. And even then buying real pins (not the fake/scrapper lots on eBay) isn't that cheap.

Jabberwocky said:

Unless you live near the Disney Soda Fountain in Hollywood or near one of the Disney parks or have access to WDI pins either via a cast member friend or by attending a D23 event, you're probably better off just buying the pins you want rather than buying secondary market pins as traders.

But either way - buying good traders or buying collection pins directly - pin collecting is not an inexpensive hobby unless all you want is to trade from lanyards in the parks. And even then buying real pins (not the fake/scrapper lots on eBay) isn't that cheap.

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Unfortunately I live in the Northeast, so no DSSH or MoG/WDI pins for me lol!

And I know it's not inexpensive, and that's not something that really bothers me (I've been collecting for a few years now), but I'm more looking for advice on picking up traders in the future for pins that I might have already missed out on. I know there are members who are kind enough to do at-cost or near-cost pickups, and it sounds like this is the best way to go.

^ Problem is, if something is easy to pick up, it's probably not going to be a great trader. That's why you're better off just buying the pins you actually want rather than spending money on pins that will sit in your trade bag if you're not near/able to get to trade events since postage has gotten so expensive to trade pins by mail.

But for reference, DisneyStore.com occasionally has pins for sale and you can also buy park pins directly from Disney on the Shop Disney app. Though again, you're still better off just buying pins you want rather than pins for trade, because if anyone else wanted those pins, they'd buy them directly themselves, too.

The one exception to this might be buying mystery sets where you're looking for a specific pin or pins in the set and the extras or duplicates would be traders. Those are probably the best investments in simple traders so long as it's a popular set.

The problem is when it comes to HTF pins, the majority of traders who have the pins you want, have a very "select" list of pins they want. Most of them have various "connections" already and will work those, leaving only pins that are incredibly difficult for us, mere mortals, to obtain. Mostly, the most recent WDI or DSSH releases. And when I say most recent, I mean things that came out that month. Even pins that came out 2 months ago, can go from super hot to out of favor, like that. So you can either spend a premium on a pin they want at that moment on Ebay, and hope by the time you receive said pin that they haven't found one elsewhere, or the "hot" thing of the week hasn't changed to something else... or just take that money and buy the pin you want, outright.

On the other end of the scale, most people will just buy the open edition pins they want. Either through pins at cost offers, or directly from the WDW Parks app. So those don't make good traders.

I have had some luck with mystery pin sets. People end up with duplicates and missing holes. But it has been difficult to find matches. Everyone ends up needing the same pins for some reason. Or there are people that just buy a lot of boxes and so they have extras but no wants. Or people only want one pin from the set so they have wants, but no extras. Another problem with these, is they are popular with the "unauthorized pin sellers" so bad pins come out almost immediately, and then the trade market freezes up as people want to avoid the bad pins.

I only half-jokingly say, the best way to get good traders is to go to the International Theme Parks, especially the China parks, and hope there is a good release while you are there. Just because it seems that that is one area where not everyone has a "connection" and the character selection can be different than the US market. Although, if you look in the right places (Facebook or Instagram) you can find them.

DSSH has been doing occasional online releases. It's really tough to be one of the lucky few that get through to the server at the right time, but if you do, you can get really great LEs at cost + shipping.

And I agree with obtaining mystery boxes, especially the ones that have chasers. The chasers are usually LEs, sometimes even low edition. For example, the mystery boxes coming out at the pin event in Epcot at the end of this month have 8 limited release pins and 8 LE250 pins. That's a pretty good shot at getting a good pull.

I've gotten some good traders by playing the Pin Games that DPF members occasionally offer. I also agree that LE/LR mystery boxes can yield good traders since people have to take a chance on what's inside instead of just buying the pin they want. I also like to mix up my traders from time to time by auctioning them off on DPF, just to keep my traders "fresh."

I agree with Jabberwocky and others, you'd be better of buying the pins you want (from a reliable source) rather than spending money in "hopes of a trade" with "someone".

The exception would be if you find someone here who has a pin you want and will trade it for something new coming out (that you can get). I'm sure there are other traders, like me, who would rather trade pins sitting in their bags than spend money on every new pin that comes out for their collection.

Good Luck!! Sue

I agree with what has been said in the posts above.

Ultimately, it all depends on what pins you want to get that you have missed in the past. Some of the pins on your grails list, you would be better off buying than trying to trade for. The farther away you get from an older pin, the less likely it would be for someone to want to trade a newer one for an older one.

A crazy one is save up to come to docfish's pin trading in CA once a year. Since it's in Anaheim you've got a wide variety of WDI, DSSH, and park pins to work with. This past one was pretty packed and there was a wide variety of traders. Us locals love this cause we have the problem of getting different pins, which seems an odd dilemma. We all have similar pins because we're in the same places, so we're in need of old pins, or pins that aren't similar to what we All have access to. Most of us are really easy on trading and as long as it's fair we're good., David and Amy are tough on negative traders so it's a pleasant and safe time. So if you can plan a vacation trip to CA, with a car you could squeeze in 3 places to pu pins. DLR resort, DSSH, and Docfish, save the buying till then, you could go home with a good haul of pins! But if that's too far away, and not possible, signing up for the at cost pick ups is your best advantage, it all depends on what your collection is and what you've got, as mentioned above, it seems the person who has your pin, doesn't want what you have. I collect stitch with ducklings, or stitch with mouth closed which means older pins, for some reason this means they're like gold and new pins are not what traders want unless it's for more than 3 and LE. So of course I start collecting other pins, and was on the hunt for pins people want. Which ends up being a money pit! My lesson learned is buy pins you don't mind having in your collection, cause that's where it stays unless you're a trading person that can keep up. There's NEW pins every week, and 2x a month DSSH, and newbies keep discovering the world of Disney pins for profit/trading. The last DSSH Lion King brought out the old and new collectors with close to 800 showing and only 150 people getting the opportunity of buying. Just have to keep it in perspective and not get stressed over it, there's still opportunities to get great pins just be patient and meet some great people along the way! Hope this helps :wavey:

Check out GoofyinMadison's thread. She is selling her traders.

I agree with the advice of the others. My sister invested in a former cast member's collection she had found of Craigslist, and some of those pins have just been sitting for 3 years now (mostly the Mickey and Minnie ones). As much as you'd want to invest in current pins: parks would take a longer time to appreciate and wdi/dssh fluctuate in value a lot. If you're willing to invest in another person's collection, that would be one of the best options. Other than that, there's growing your traders with games/purchases and that happens at whatever pace you can afford it.

Awesome, thank you all so much for your advice, there's a lot of great ideas here & a lot to take into consideration! But yeah, it sounds like just dropping the money for those most-wanted ones are the way to go. Now to hope for an eBay snipe


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I think a lot of it depends on what you collect, too. I mostly collect Megara and Esmeralda, so it's slim pickings for me. I rarely see any good Meg pins on ebay - most are scrappers of the same 2 or 3 pins, or fantasy pins. And when I do find a good one, it's out of my price range (even if they're just ProPin or Sedesma, their sheer obscurity nets them a high asking price.) However I have managed to jump on some really good deals for more popular pins, ie Tangled and Little Mermaid, and have traded those for my wants. For instance, I won an auction for a rare Belle pin for $30 and traded that for a Meg pin that was going for $70. So I essentially did buy the Meg pin, but I ended up saving a bunch of money AND got to make another collector really happy, which is always awesome.

That said, this strategy is all about availability/supply & demand, and therefore it's pretty much pointless if you collect popular things, which it looks like you do. If you search for "Lion King pin" on ebay you get 1,734 results; "Hades pin" has 522 results, and "Marvel pin" has 5,901 results. (By contrast, "Megara pin" has 65 and "Esmeralda pin" has 50... and again, a bunch of those are scrappers/fantasy. So you can see my dilemma.)

So yeah, I'd agree that you're better off buying instead of trading, unless you just enjoy the sport of it, ha (which I totally get.)

I guess the question is, do you want to just collect pins or trade pins to? If you want to trade pins, I honestly recommend trading some of the easier pins to get. The really hard to get/rare pins, you should just outright by for yourself. If you want to trade and make friends that way, go for some of the easier pins to trade and just be okay with trading pins that aren't that hard to get for the fun of it. I haven't traded pins in probably close to 5 years now, I would much rather just buy pins for my collection. I also have a really hard time trading away pins once I have them.

shooting4ownhand said:

If you want to trade pins, I honestly recommend trading some of the easier pins to get. The really hard to get/rare pins, you should just outright by for yourself. If you want to trade and make friends that way, go for some of the easier pins to trade and just be okay with trading pins that aren't that hard to get for the fun of it.

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This is pretty much how I'm going to start looking at it. I mean, I joined DPF with the idea of trading on here, so I'd very much like to continue to try and trade a bit when I can, but for the HTF stuff, the overwhelming consensus is that I'll need to buy it (which is fine, I knew that might be a possibility when I started this thread)

I am selling all my traders if your interested.