While it is fun to have some traders, as a resident curmudgeon and long timer who still has pins they picked up from 2000-2002 “because it might be a good trader” be mindful in investing too much money in traders instead of your collection.
Traders will come naturally via duplicates from mystery / blind boxes, sales you stumble into, accidental oopsies when you purchase the same pin twice, or you decide to refocus your collection and pins move from keepers to traders. And then you will, without knowing how it happened, find yourself amongst the ranks of “I have too many trader pins!”
The reality is that often the person who has a pin you want will already own what you have to trade or it doesn’t fit their focus. So investing in your collection is a more direct way of checking off your ISO list. However, blind box pins either from the parks or Loungefly (Hot Topic, Box Lunch) seem to do better than most because there always seems to be someone working on a set and people are more likely to find a similar pin to swap out in their trade book. The other good way is to be extremely rich 🤣 with access to exclusive CM stores, which is not 99.9% of us, unfortunately!
Good luck and welcome to the forum!
