does anyone trade anymore???
I just send out tons of trade emails, should be in peoples inboxes tomorrow. I don't like the new pinpics site at all. People were happy to check their email inbox in the morning but the new site requires you to log into their site daily to see requests. No thanks.
Another issue with the overseas trading is the huge spike in shipping costs. It used to be like $3-$5 to ship to Europe, now it's $6-$9. And Euro traders have realy tightened up lately on their LE stuff. So they want more but it costs more to ship to them. Double whammy.
But I agree people now-a-days just want to buy and sell. Which is sad for those of you not near a park. We lucky ones still get to trade frequently in person at the parks and at DSF here in SoCal. Buying and selling is impersonal and you don't have to worry about losing a pin as much since paypal/ebay protection/rules are in place. But I'd rather trade.
I feel the majority of offers I get online for pin trading are increasingly lopsided though. So many offers for hidden mickey's or older park rack pins for HTF or low LE pins. I know some are newer people but some are just the same request every single day. I don't even open some peoples emails anymore. Someone from Florida, has DD in his name, that guy sends tons of crazy lopsided stuff everyday. Gets old and probably turns off many newer traders with the constant garbage.
But, we haven't had as many good pins as we have had in 2011/2012. 2013 has been a dry year with just spikes here and there. 2011/2012 we had good park releases, PODMs, etc. 2013 the park releases that are good are few and far between and the monthly series are awful. Those easel pins? and the shield surprise ones? WDI has really limited the D23 shopping days and pin releases. Seems they focused too much on D23 pin releases which kind of bombed other than the designer set, Art of Ariel and maybe La Luna. Poor offerings have kind of dried up the middle market. Hidden Mickey's are gobbled up so fast lately that even those are harder to find/trade. All that is left is DSF pins and a few highlights like the DLRP lockets, various Tangled pins, etc. I don't do Villains so all the villain pins to me were targeted at others.
I think less Tangled stuff may help bring some of the other collections back to the forefront. All anyone wants to do lately is talk Tangled, Ariel, or Grail. I feel like people try to label a pin right away as junk or double it's cost + up to instant grail. If it doesn't double in value it's hardly worth getting or trading. While I tend to agree, lots of junky pin designs lately, not every pin is a winner. Seems less are interested in the middle-of-the-road pins and just focus on grails. The one-uppers and elitests will drive the newer folks away. Which doesn't help anything.
I pretty much just keep my PinPics as a catalogue of haves and wants. I've never accomplished a trade online, and with maybe one exception never even get a reply. I've considered deliberately buying traders (i.e.: looking at what was in demand before I went to DLP and picking up extras) but I just can't bring myself to spend the money for stock that I probably won't be able to move. I've found that just because people say they want a pin, that's no guarantee they'll even reply to an offer to trade it to them. Rather than spend the money on traders, I'm just better off buying the actual pins I want. In the end it'd probably be cheaper.