Open DPF Anniversary Game: "What Year Did You Join?"

[dznycrzyfmly]

I would LOVE the murder games to come back! I think I only had the chance to participate in one but they were so entertaining! 🤣😆 I don’t know if I would have time to contribute a whole lot, but I have a feeling the members we have here would make it loads of creative fun 😍

Oooh what’s this?! Sounds like a good time

 

[Connies_Hobby]

@dznycrzyfmly you need to post your entry!

 

[dznycrzyfmly]

That's an awesome drawing.

Those friendly sporting opportunities in Canadale's games to knock others back a point and trash talk each other were so fun. I especially enjoyed the one where we had to write a song to the tune of You're Welcome. I was playing as Maleficent and here's mine.


Okay, okay, I see what's happening here
You think you can win this but you can’t
You don't even know how to play
It's adorable
Well, it's nice to see that gamers never change
Open your eyes, let's begin
Yes, it's really me, it's Mali
Breathe it in
I know it's a lot
The horns, the staff
And you know I’m gonna kick you in the …
What can I say except, "I’ll win this"
The contest, the game, the pin
Hey, it's okay, it's okay
I’ll win this
I know I’m gonna have to fight to win
Hey

Who has a bun and pins to the sky
That makes you feel you want to cry

This guy
When the games get cold

You might as well decide you should go
‘Cause I’ll win it, yo
Oh, also are you having fun?
You're welcome
Glad to bring you these silly puns
Also I know all the games
I’ll win this
You’ll find your efforts are in vain
So what can I say except I’ll win this
Don’t take my word, soon you will all see
You should all soon pray, it's okay
I’ll win this
You don’t stand any chance of beating me
I’ll win this
I’ll win this
Well, come to think of it
Friends, honestly I could list everyone

Kevin and Grogu, Fedora and on and on
Jiminy, Donald, should just run along
The game, the score, last round
Oh, that was Mali just messing around
I’ll beat Mickey
You may think that sucks
But then I’ll beat Smee, and both of the Ducks
What about Stitch?
How far can that one go?
First Russell then HeiHei then he’s the next to go
Hey Alice and Grumpy where you been?
Ariel and Lightyear I’ll do you in
Eeyore won’t win
Roguefort almost did me in

Mali will put Belle and Groot with the others in the bin
(Ha ha ha ha ha ha, hey)
Well, anyway let me say, "I’ll win this" (I’ll win this)
For the second time don’t you know
Hey, it's okay, it's okay, I’ll win this (I’ll win this)

I bet you thought I forgot Figaro
Hey, don’t feel too bad but I’ll win this (I’ll win this)
But you should try to win it too
You work real hard and you might win this (might win this)
You never know what you’ll manage to do (but)
I’ll win this
(I’ll win this)
I’ll win this
And not you

I remember this game.. Jiminy did not survive the battle 😂 The puzzles from the games were my favorite! Can someone please bring back those puzzle challenges for the holidays!!

 

[dznycrzyfmly]

AJK’s story reminded me of the fun games we had a couple years ago. For me, the best part of the game was the puzzles you had to put together and try to beat each others time. Some of y’all who participated got the puzzles done in record time; it never ceased to amaze me at how quickly others got puzzles done!! I had a family trip in the middle of the games and missed quite a few activities towards the end but the creative games were awesome to read after I came back! Good times - if the folks who hosted those games are still here can we play another round?! I’m very competitive!! 😂

 

[Pinatic]

I joined in 2024! My fave memory was probably later that year being so excited for my first D23 Expo experience and being able to talk about strategy here with everyone since I didn't know anyone at the event. I appreciated the welcome!

 

[Connies_Hobby]

Updated to here.

20 members signed up, I'm impressed.

Great Memories too.

One year is still open. And we can get more.

Keep it Going!

 

[Cicada]

Oooh what’s this?! Sounds like a good time

Here are some older threads I searched up for your perusal — i definitely think these should return!

T

Thread 'A DREAM or a Nightmare: Murder Mystery OFFICIAL signup'

Feb 25, 2012

Choose your character and get ready for an adventure. This will be a Land and Sea adventure. It will take us between the Disney DREAM cruise ship and WDW resorts in search of a murderer.

This is the OFFICIAL signup...Please review the rules before signing up. Please choose a character and include your chioce when signing up. Signups will be open until March 15. This gives everyone plenty of time to get ready, including me. The last game for me will start on March 16th(Japan time)

Moderator's note:

Here is a link to the game rules!:...

• tokyodisneydad
• fun game mystery drama
• Replies: 32
• Forum: Disney Pin Discussion

T

Thread 'HAPPY EASTER, MR. JACK: A HALLOWEEN MURDER MYSTERY....The Game'

Sep 30, 2011

*Somewhere deep within a closed Haunted Mansion, within Tokyo Disneyland, Jack Skellington sits and contemplates a new development that may effect Halloween Town. If anyone was nearby they would hear him mumbling to himself.*

"Unbelievable...who would do such a thing? I just finished decorating the parks for Halloween and this happens. I don't have time to redo things. I have to start getting the mansion ready for the yearly changeover. I'm going to need to call in some help."

OOC*THE...

• tokyodisneydad
• Replies: 548
• Forum: Disney Pin Discussion

Thread 'last dizpins murder mystery begins!!'

Oct 31, 2010

attention all detectives!! the last murder mystery on dizpins has begun. pls check in! lets make the game the best ever!

• nursek8
• Replies: 36
• Forum: Disney Pin Discussion

https://www.disneypinforum.com/threads/interest-in-a-murder-mystery.59238/

 

[dancecats]

Oooh what’s this?! Sounds like a good time

How to explain the murder games? In the simplest explanation, they're a (mostly) unscripted, role-playing game where you play as a Disney character and attempt to solve a murder that occurs at the beginning. Spoiler alert, to avoid pearl-clutching after signing up: multiple murders occur before the game ends and ALL victims and the killer are Disney characters.

To elaborate on the game play itself: you select a Disney character you wish to portray. Be thoughtful in your selection, because game play requires you to post 'actions' and 'dialogue' you think your character would 'do' and 'say,' with the ultimate goal of solving the murders. The games are at their best when you pick characters whose personalities you know and for whom you can improvise said actions and dialogue you think your chosen character might plausibly do and say in response to circumstances that (almost) nobody imagined they would ever be in.

This is where, as @Story mentioned, the creative fun comes in. As I said, the games are mostly unscripted. As the game host, I have the general game story written out so I can guide it, but everything the players post is completely free-wheeling and up to you. I can't tell you how much time I've spent laughing hysterically at what we have collectively come up with during these games while my family stared at me like I lost my mind. Being an experienced writer or storyteller is not a prerequisite to play; writers of all skill levels are welcome to play. All that is required is a desire to have some silly fun, the ability and willingness to go along with the flow of the game, and oh yea, work with the other players to piece together the clues to solve a murder.

If there is sufficient interest, I'll post the game rules and start working on a new game, with a sign up thread soon to follow.

 

[dancecats]

Here are some older threads I searched up for your perusal — i definitely think these should return!

I've missed the games and I'm definitely willing to host them if the interest is there! If they come back, should we create a subforum for the games, so they don't take over the place?

 

[dznycrzyfmly]

ok the murder mystery game sounds extremely unhinged and EPIC! I can’t wait to read the thread for this. Thank you for sharing!! 🤗

 

[Cicada]

I

I've missed the games and I'm definitely willing to host them if the interest is there! If they come back, should we create a subforum for the games, so they don't take over the place?

I’m thinking since there may not be more than a few at a time, they can just go into the main forum with an appropriate prefix/flair so they’re easily findable by filtering on the prefix.

 

[dancecats]

ok the murder mystery game sounds extremely unhinged and EPIC! I can’t wait to read the thread for this. Thank you for sharing!! 🤗

They're all that and more. You can read a few previous games @Cicada posted in post #57 to see how they're played. If memory serves, that last game on the Dream/WDW was EPIC!

I

I’m thinking since there may not be more than a few at a time, they can just go into the main forum with an appropriate prefix/flair so they’re easily findable by filtering on the prefix.

At any time, there are going to be 3 or 4 threads related to the games:
Rules thread
Sign up thread
Game thread
Possible Player status thread (each player/detective is assigned a rank in DFI based upon game experience and murders solved)

 

[Cicada]

They're all that and more. You can read a few previous games @Cicada posted in post #57 to see how they're played. If memory serves, that last game on the Dream/WDW was EPIC!

At any time, there are going to be 3 or 4 threads related to the games:
Rules thread
Sign up thread
Game thread
Possible Player status thread (each player/detective is assigned a rank in DFI based upon game experience and murders solved)

realistically, the MM threads should be pretty active, and i'm trying to avoid further fragmentation as I'm working to combine less active forums with other, more active ones.

I think a prefix would suffice and also have a visual identifier for those types of threads

 

[Connies_Hobby]

I'm very Pleased to see this Game Thread Has Opened the Door for discussion on reviving old games, and starting some New games too.

That being said, may I suggest a Thread is Opened for such purpose? And we Seriously look at getting these up and going.

Thanks everyone.

 

[Cicada]

No prize; or if I win — “pin it forward” and draw for another member 🫶🏽

Joined October 15, 2010; user ID = 1 as the creator of the forum.

Most of my memories were from the earliest days trying to get the site off the ground after Dizpins’ closure — along with my cousins (@Bricklayer and @thejessta) we were attending almost every pin event in SoCal for the first year or two of operation. (check out The "Blast from the Past" thread for some event coverage and photos from 2010-2011 when we were more active)

At the time I’d just graduated grad school so was in the early stages of my career, which is why I fell out of the hobby fairly early on, but I felt like the site needed to stay alive for the benefit of the hobby....and here we are 15 years later.

Another...maybe less pleasant memory — but a memory nonetheless — is of all the early drama, which has been summarized quite well in the following reddit post -- if you weren't around during that time (or if you were) -- it's a rollercoaster of a read, and in retrospect, it makes me happy that we are a part of the hobbies' history in some way:

https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/gd06k3/disney_pins_much_ado_about_a_database_or_who_knew

Also quoting here for posterity, in case the original reddit post ever goes away (credit to /u/CoolClearMorning):

[Disney Pins] Much Ado About a Database, Or Who Knew Shiny Pieces of Metal Had This Much Drama?​

To begin with, I am only a very casual pin collector and was not in the hobby when all of this went down. I’ve been able to piece this story together from reading way back in several forums that were very active at the time, but if anyone else knows more details (or sees something I’ve gotten wrong) please speak up. First, some backstory about Disney pin collecting and collectors:

Hardcore Disney pin collectors are a relatively small and insular community. Most non-traders tend to think of the Disney pins as enamel pins of characters that one can easily find on a pre-packed lanyard and purchase at one of the many gift shops that dot Disney parks along with the occasional set you can find at Wal-Mart or Target. As a general rule, the pins in this story are not those pins.

To start with, there are three categories of Disney pins:

• “Rack” or open edition pins are produced without regard for edition number and could theoretically be available forever if Disney finds the pin profitable. These are the majority of pins that one can find on any spinning rack at a Disney park or property, along with most of the pins that proliferate at the Disney Store’s website and at other retailers.
• “Limited Release” pins are generally only available at a select location (sometimes only Disney World OR Disneyland), and are generally smaller in terms of edition size, but edition size is often not made public. Theoretically these pins could be as open-ended in edition size as a rack pin, or they could be incredibly limited. There is at least one infamous Limited Release pin (Rapunzel from the Reveal/Conceal Girls series) that is considered one of the lowest-edition and hardest-to-find pins out there.
• “Limited Edition” pins are exactly what they say—a select number are produced, and they generally sell out fairly quickly to both collectors and resellers. While originally many LE pins were available online for Disney fans to purchase from anywhere in the country, these days they are almost all exclusively released at or around the Disney parks.

It’s not uncommon for older rack pins of popular characters to inflate in price on eBay, but it’s a guarantee that LR and LE pins will immediately double, triple, or more in price once they are sold out and eBay becomes the sole place to get your pin fix.

Except, of course, if you trade.

Pin trading became an official Disney “thing” back in 1999, and originally was centered solely in the Disney parks. Today it also takes place online amongst people who don’t live anywhere near a park. Rack pins tend not to trade well with the pin-trading elite, which means that a trader needs LE and LR pins—the lower the edition size and more popular the movie/character the better—as “traders” (i.e. pins they don’t really care about except as currency) to trade for their “grails” or most-wanted pins.

And lest anyone mistake this for an inexpensive hobby, some of these hard-to-find LE and LR pins sell for thousands on eBay. That Reveal/Conceal Rapunzel pin I mentioned a moment ago? There’s one up on eBay as I type this for $8,000.

So once upon a time, two Disney pin fans got the idea to create a database of pins. It would be crowd-sourced, which meant that people could take pictures of their actual pins—not just stock images owned by Disney—and people could use it to both keep track of what was “out there” in the pin-trading world. It was also envisioned as a resource to catalog traders’ own collections and to arrange trades with other pin fans around the world.

Pin Pics was born!

Since Disney doesn’t keep an official public list of all of their pin releases, and because there are hundreds (if not thousands) of new Disney pins released annually, some of which are never available to the general public and are only sold or awarded to Disney employees, it’s easy to see why a database like this would quickly gain popularity. The owners were pin collectors themselves, they welcomed anyone and everyone to add information to the database, and best of all the pin entries could be easily used to track a pin’s popularity; people who wanted to trade for the pin could mark it on their “Wants” list, and people who owned one and were open to trading it could add it to their “Trades.” The ratio between trades/wants became an easy way for collectors to evaluate a pin’s “worth” outside of its original MSRP and whatever someone had most recently sold it for on eBay.

One of the other truly valuable things about PinPics was its use as a “scrapper spotter.” Scrapper is a general-use term in the pin-trading community to refer to A: a true production overrun that may also have flaws that led it to being “scrapped” in the factory, B: a bootleg pin made using the original pin molds but not authorized by Disney, or C: a counterfeit that looks approximately like the real pin, but may also have significant differences such as paint color, irregular stamping on the back side of the pin, strange margins, etc… Basically, scrapper = fake pin. Disney has an unofficial policy to not really care much about scrappers (why is a hotly debated topic amongst pin collectors—from what I have gathered it’s likely a combination of the cost of trying to shut down counterfeit operations in China as well as a desire not to leave a bad impression on tourists who unknowingly buy grab bags of cheap “park tradeable” pins on eBay to trade on vacation at one of Disney’s parks). Cost-wise it’s obviously better for Disney to keep the vacation-only pin traders happy and spending money on park tickets, food, and other merchandise than it is to make them feel bad for having a fake pin, especially when a real version of the same isn’t even a drop in Disney’s vast bucket. But for many collectors, pin trading is the only point of going to the parks, and scrappers aren’t considered valuable or tradeable if you’re a true hobbyist. Scrap versions of many rack, limited release, and limited edition pins all exist.

Scrappers ballooned in the mid-2000s, and PinPics was seen as a good way to track pins that had known or suspected scraper copies in circulation, as well as to verify what the “real” pin was supposed to look like. I cannot stress enough how much the Disney pin community relied on PinPics. Tens of thousands of images were uploaded onto it over the years, virtually all of them pins that its members owned or had owned themselves. The database was not-for-profit, free to access, free to use for trading via a messaging system, free to utilize as a catalog of your own collection, and ultimately free for scrapper identification.

PinPics had its own discussion forum called PinTalk. Another forum called Disney Pin Forum (DPF) came into existence around the same time. From what I have been able to gather they weren’t really competing forums—PinPics was mostly about its database, and DPF had no similar product, it was just a place for people to talk about pins. Both filled a hole left when an older site called Dizpins went offline. Many members participated in both forums under the same usernames, and DPF frequently referred new collectors to PinPics. Most of my links here are from Disney Pin Forum because PinTalk’s archives start in 2013 when the forum moved to TapaTalk. Even the Wayback Machine wasn’t helpful in locating earlier records. Many posts from the current version of the PinTalk forum have also been subsequently deleted, particularly those that related to the drama I’m about to detail. When possible, I’ve included PinTalk links, but there are some pretty large swaths of posts that have clearly been deleted.

At the outset, PinPics explicitly allowed eBay sellers, some of whom were the same people who had uploaded all of those pictures onto PinPics in the first place, to use its images in their listings. This was notably in the early days of eBay when fewer people owned high-resolution digital cameras, and before eBay required sellers to post actual pictures of the items they were selling.

Back in 2012 all of this came crashing down around everyone’s ears.

In a nutshell, the owners of PinPics had tired of the hobby, and as such were no longer interested in maintaining the database. All of those images, all of the traffic, and all of the hotlinking via eBay likely cost quite a lot of money. So the owners sold the database to a trio of fairly new pin collectors that went by the collective moniker of LANSAM.

As new traders (and there were rumors that at least one member of the trio wasn’t a pin collector at all, and was only interested in the potential of making money off PinPics) LANSAM were viewed with a considerable amount of skepticism from the larger pin trading community from the beginning.

To start with, LANSAM very quickly made it clear that they were interested in turning PinPics profitable. Now, the finances of the original PinPics owners were never transparent—periodically there would be fundraising drives to pay for server costs, but the exact cost of running the site was never disclosed—however LANSAM opened their relationship with the pin-trading community by teasing that they were going to upgrade the OG PinPics system to a new, better, more efficient one that would also offer some additional benefits to those who paid annual subscription fees. What those benefits were remained murky at first, but many pin traders were alarmed that content they had provided for the benefit of the hobby and for their own collections could be monetized. Worse, they were worried that they could be locked out of the images and descriptions they had provided if they didn’t pay ongoing fees to LANSAM.

Sh*t. Hit. The. Fan.

While many members of the larger community urged calm and noted that LANSAM weren’t likely monsters, that they had been vetted by the original, trusted owners of PinPics and had been found to be worthy buyers of the database, and that the subscriber benefits were supposedly going to be new features that the current PinPics did not offer, a very vocal group continued to run around shouting that the Disney pin sky was falling.

LANSAM offered to host both a Q&A chat as well as to accept questions via private message that would be answered FAQ-style on the forum as a way to quell the furor. According to people who participated, the chat did not go well. Too many users, too little time given to answering difficult questions about the future of PinPics, and a growing awareness that LANSAM had few concrete ideas about how they would accomplish some of their stated and implied goals for the site were all highlighted in a thread about the chat on DPF. A few of the more skeptically-minded users worried that the FAQ would turn into just a selection of questions that LANSAM wanted to answer, and that since all questions had to be submitted via PM the larger userbase would have no way to know which questions LANSAM was declining to respond to. Nevertheless, the chat happened and the FAQ were posted.

Until they weren’t.

Days after both went live, they were unceremoniously removed from the PinPics forum. No rationale was given for their removal, but the negative response to both from users who had previously encouraged others to keep an open mind was fairly obviously behind it.

At about the same time, LANSAM changed its user agreement to announce that PinPics would no longer allow their images to be used on eBay listings, and that they were going to watermark every image that had already been uploaded onto the site as well as those users would upload in the future. Now, keep in mind that use in eBay listings had been explicitly allowed up until this point. Many pin collectors were also pin sellers, and (see $8,000 Rapunzel Reveal/Conceal) eBay pin sales can be big business. Few people on the forums would admit to being sellers as well as traders, but some did freely acknowledge that they had eBay storefronts and were upset that images they had uploaded of pins in their own collections were suddenly PinPics’ to watermark and restrict.

Internet armchair lawyering is never pretty, and plenty ensued on this topic. Lots of yelling and shouting, but ultimately very few people were either able or willing to do the work it would take to get their images (which were not apparently tagged with the username of the person who uploaded them) taken down.

Things largely died down between the larger collector community and LANSAM for a few months after this, except for an ongoing beef between a Disney Pin Forum user named TiggerNut and LANSAM. TiggerNut was one of the users most vocally upset about the watermarking/eBay issue, and was quite open about the fact that she had a large eBay store and relied on PinPics images, thousands of which she claimed to have uploaded herself, to sell her merchandise. She continued to yell and shout regularly on DPF about how much she distrusted LANSAM, but the forum’s users seemed largely tired of the conflict and ready to move on, especially if LANSAM could deliver on a better version of PinPics. She was eventually blocked from PinPics, as were several others. TiggerNut remained convinced until the end that all of those who had been banned were being blamed for poor behavior because they were friends with her, though others threw doubt on this theory.

At some point, TiggerNut encountered LANSAM at a pin trading event, and was very upset that it appeared that they were selling high-end pins. Some recent Googling had led TiggerNut to believe that one of the members of LANSAM was the relative of a suspected scrapper dealer who had sold faked high-end pins. He also had a felony conviction on his record for passing bad checks. In a since-deleted DPF post, she posted images of LANSAM at a table during the pin event, displaying pins, and heavily implied that she thought they were A: planning to use the site to set up pin sales in the future, and B: selling scrappers.

Now, as you can imagine given the concern over scrappers, reputation is a very important part of pin trading and selling. PinPics and Disney Pin Forum both had a system whereby users could rate one another, similar to the way a buyer can rate an eBay seller (though PinPics’ later went offline and never really came back). Any negative or even neutral feedback—especially regarding knowingly selling scrappers—could tank a trader’s reputation, even if they had hundreds of positive feedback comments and only one or two negative. DPF was very cautious about the potential for libel claims against the site, and disallowed lists of eBay sellers who allegedly sold fakes at the time (a list is now prominently featured on the forum), and TiggerNut was roundly discouraged from A: making claims against LANSAM she could not back up, and B: making accusations against someone for crimes an alleged relative may have committed.

The next phase in LANSAM’s move to monetize PinPics came with the promised PinPics 2.0 site update. For months people asked what the update would look like, would this, that, or the other feature be available, when they were going to get even a sneak peek at the new design, etc… Finally the new site premiered, and while first impressions were mostly positive the overwhelming sentiment turned more sour as people began poking more extensively through the site and realized that some of the features they had enjoyed previously were not available. There was also the problem that the site wasn’t actually in its final form yet, and likely hadn’t been ready to debut at all. The fact that PinPics kept its old site still running for months after the supposed changeover did not help matters any; some longtime users simply refused to shift to the new site because using the old site was easier and more comfortable.

Disney Pin Forum and PinPics had not been friendly for some time at this point, with quite a lot of criticism of the new PinPics owners and site happening on DPF, but DPF users clearly still drove a considerable amount of traffic to PinPics on a regular basis, and many of them continued to be regular posters on the PinPics forum. For one thing, PinPics continued to facilitate trades, but more importantly it was where almost all users still kept track of their collections and wants. Need an image of a pin you desperately want but don’t have? PinPics has it—just copy or hotlink to it and you can put it in your DPF signature for other traders to see. The more views on that signature you get, the greater the chances are that you’ll run into someone on the forum who has what you want and will trade it to you for something in your (also linked) PinPics trade list.

In 2013, PinPics informed the owners of DPF that all links to Pin Pics must be disabled. Not just hotlinked images, which would be understandable from a cost perspective, but straight links between pages. Overnight, all of the links went dead. This decision was reversed, but then it wasn’t, and neither site seemed to fess up to being the ones to break the links permanently.

Because neither DPF nor PinPics had informed users about the takedown, at first people assumed that the broken links were temporary. When an announcement was made that it had been deliberate and would be permanent, people began to lose their minds. I am going to be unabashedly editorial here and say that this decision is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read on the internet. Hotlinking images costs server money without driving traffic to a hosting site, but straight links between the forums isn’t the same thing. Moreover, Disney Pin Forum brought traffic to PinPics (which at this point was selling pins and accepting subscriptions) through those links. It is just so much shooting oneself in the foot to shut down all links because you’re getting some pushback about changes from your own users via a third party. When tempers cooled over a year later talks about allowing links resumed, but the damage was permanently done and most links to PinPics within the DPF archives still don’t work.

The next major concern for many regarding LANSAM and PinPics came when the newest PinPics business venture was announced. Unlike many other collectables, Disney pins had never embraced (or had an independent body willing to engage in) rating pins. Mint vs. near-mint? There wasn’t a real system in place. Seeing a hole in the market, PinPics began offering a pin-grading service. For a fee, a collector could send their high-end pin to PinPics, have it evaluated, and then get it encapsulated with a grading sticker attached to the box verifying its condition. Given how much money certain hard-to-find pins can be worth on the secondary market, this isn’t an unreasonable service, nor is it outside the realm of what many other hobbies (such as baseball card collecting) already do.

The only problem was that LANSAM’s biggest weakness in the community from the beginning was its collective inexperience with Disney pins. Many reasonable collectors asked for evidence that the person doing the rating had extensive experience with pins in the first place, much less with the very low-edition pins (see again, Reveal/Conceal Rapunzel) that most collectors who’d been in the hobby for years had never seen in person. With so many designs, how could a rater know for sure that a slightly blunted edge on a pin was a defect, not a standard feature on every pin made in that design? What about scrappers? Would the rater be enough of a pin expert to spot well-made fakes? Would he/she be able to tell the difference between an authentic pin with manufacturing defects from a scrapped fake? No clear answers were available, only assurances that the grading service was going to be good for the community.

The grading service launched, and like so many things in this story, some parts went perfectly well and would have quelled controversy had they been announced in a timely manner, and some did not. Tomart was in charge of the grading, which calmed fears about expertise. The graded pins, though, were a different story once they started getting shipped back to their owners. For one thing, the seals that were supposed to assure an owner/buyer/seller exactly what they were trading or selling? Not the most unique or tamper-resistant looking sticker around. Some were worse. The service never seemed to take off, and was quietly discontinued at some point in late 2014 or early 2015.

In late 2013 the first rumblings of a new pin database that would compete with PinPics began. People quickly pointed out that matching PinPics’ catalog would be challenging due to how long it had been around, how many older pins had been added by now-defunct collectors, and how extensively PinPics’ system of numbering pins for identification purposes had penetrated into the collecting community as a whole. This is still true, by the way, a casual search on eBay for “PinPics” nets hundreds of hits as many sellers list the identification number created by PinPics in the title of their listing. Still, there was interest in an alternative database if it offered different features than the current iteration of PinPics while also featuring a deep catalog of pins. Disney Pin Place was born! Less than two months later, it died. As best I can piece together, the site’s architect was scraping data from PinPics, including photos, to build the database quickly. PinPics quickly issued a DCMA takedown notice. The 2019 read on the situation comes down squarely in favor of the takedown, but at the time people were quite upset about it.

Remember back when the sale of PinPics to LANSAM was brand new and TiggerNut was ranting that she was convinced that they were going to start selling pins? Guess what they did? This venture involved a distribution agreement with ACME/Hot Art, a company that was licensed to manufacture high-end official Disney pins. It was a big freakin’ deal, and some of these were big freakin’ pins. How it worked was that people could pre-order these limited edition pins (costing between $40-$200, and marketed as not just pins, but works of art), pay up front, and then would receive their pins when the manufacturer shipped them from China. In addition to selling pins outright, there was also a game called Pinopolis—also the name of the PinPics pin-selling company--that is frankly far too confusing for me to try to explain (and I would explain it poorly), but if you’re really interested their Facebook page has posts as recent as March of this year. Only people who placed pre-orders were initially supposed to be able to acquire these pins, but unsold inventory was sometimes later made available to the general public for not much more than pre-ordering customers paid.

Back in 2018, the Pinopolis/ACME agreement came apart. First, very expensive pins were taking months—6-8 or more—to arrive after pre-orders. Payments made through PayPal have a limited refund shelf life of 180 days. Beyond that, people who had paid hundreds (or thousands) of dollars for these pins were effectively left without recourse to get their money back, even if Pinopolis never delivered their pins. Second, no one really seemed to know what was going on with the pins, including the people who worked for LANSAM and Pinopolis. At one point there was even a testy standoff between two PinPics/Pinopolis reps on Disney Pin Forum about who was allowed to answer which questions. Finally, ACME lost the Disney license, leaving Pinopolis holding the bag on pre-orders that might never be manufactured. Interestingly, many of the 2018 designs have been auctioned off over Facebook Live in the last 9-12 months, so at some point Hot Art/ACME did deliver the goods, though Pinopolis stopped trying to market them on the already-burned forums of both their own PinPics site and Disney Pin Forum.

So where does that leave PinPics today? Well, it’s not pretty, kids. The site became increasingly glitchy and unreliable as the post-sale years passed, and notably went down multiple times just prior to major pin trading events in 2017 and 2018, which is precisely when many traders needed to use it as a trades/wants record. It was all but unreadable for a period in 2019 when more page space was eaten up by ads than content. I first tried to look at PinPics while this was going on, and it was even worse than the screenshot in that last link shows. Per their own forums, at least as far back as 2018 the database itself was starting to crumble under the weight of old, buggy code. In spite of accepting sponsorship donations (with associated ACME pin bonuses) for years, the site struggled to support its servers.

At present, no one appears to be maintaining the database or uploading new pins that have been submitted by users over the last few months. Lenny, part of the LANSAM group, posted to their forums back in October that the database is not for sale, and that they are working on rolling out an even newer update, but it’s been crickets since then. As much of pin trading has moved to Facebook and Instagram it’s unclear just how big a change the slow demise of PinPics is having on the larger Disney pin collector community, but for its core of dedicated longtime users it’s clearly making an impact. A new pin database has also emerged, one that is generating its content new without using the photos or descriptions that were originally crowdsourced and then copyrighted by PinPics. To date that database has a little over 30,000 pins recorded; PinPics’ database holds nearly 120,000. No matter what happens to the databases in the future, losing PinPics as an active resource almost certainly means losing records of many pins that collectors would like to preserve.

 

[Connies_Hobby]

@Cicada, TY for taking the time to post the above. I for one, learned a lot about you and the early days of the forum from it.

 

[hopemax]

Connie, I noticed you put fuzzybunny in 2021, but she's 2010.

 

[Connies_Hobby]

Connie, I noticed you put fuzzybunny in 2021, but she's 2010.

🫣 Thank YOU 😊 😘

 

[mybabykelly]

Awww super fun game Connie! I’m still thinking of what game I’m going to host. I joined in 2010 maybe a couple weeks after DPF’s debut.

One of my best memories? That’s so so hard! Games are always fun, @Rasputin would always host the most generous and fun holiday games back in the day! I think my most fond memories are chatting with my long-timers via messages and chat and keeping in touch. Even if it’s just a quick hello or a comment thumbs up, it feels like extended family who keep this place homey for me!

 

[cyke23]

No prize; or if I win — “pin it forward” and draw for another member 🫶🏽

Joined October 15, 2010; user ID = 1 as the creator of the forum.

Most of my memories were from the earliest days trying to get the site off the ground after Dizpins’ closure — along with my cousins (@Bricklayer and @thejessta) we were attending almost every pin event in SoCal for the first year or two of operation. (check out The "Blast from the Past" thread for some event coverage and photos from 2010-2011 when we were more active)

At the time I’d just graduated grad school so was in the early stages of my career, which is why I fell out of the hobby fairly early on, but I felt like the site needed to stay alive for the benefit of the hobby....and here we are 15 years later.

Another...maybe less pleasant memory — but a memory nonetheless — is of all the early drama, which has been summarized quite well in the following reddit post -- if you weren't around during that time (or if you were) -- it's a rollercoaster of a read, and in retrospect, it makes me happy that we are a part of the hobbies' history in some way:

https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/gd06k3/disney_pins_much_ado_about_a_database_or_who_knew

Also quoting here for posterity, in case the original reddit post ever goes away (credit to /u/CoolClearMorning):

Thanks for posting this here. I read this about once a year. I don’t save a lot of reddit posts, but this one is still saved.

 

[Cicada]

Thanks for posting this here. I read this about once a year. I don’t save a lot of reddit posts, but this one is still saved.

i have to admit that i revisit it from time to time -- it's such a good, well-structured chronicle of events, and the links to the historical threads/posts (where relevant) makes it so good.

 

[Connies_Hobby]

Updated to here.

Wow, with each passing day, I am learning more and more and more about our DPF Fam. Thank you to all you have entered, and to the Admins/Mods who have chimed in too.

We still have the 19th, so I am hoping MORE Members will sign up.

*Note to any new Members, if you are able to satisfy the New Member Requirements by the 19th, you are welcome to join this game. Thank you.

 

[Marie1]

I joined DPF in 2024.

I have really enjoyed the pin games and round robins that I have participated in so far.

I have also appreciated the generosity of the DPF members who have offered to do pin pick-ups at the parks or at events.

 

[Connies_Hobby]

Updated to here:

I'm pleased to see a few years, doubled/tripled up. Hope to see more.

2021 and 2023 are still open for entries.

I'm tempted to start researching and see if I can find members for these two years and fill this up. If anyone knows a member for either year, or, members that haven't entered, please....tag them.

Thank You!

 

[watzshakinbacon]

I had to go to my profile to confirm I joined in 2016! Almost 10 years ago!!

Def lots of memories, esp when I was much more active on the site. I'm definitely happy to have made lasting friendship from my internet pin friends, including one for whom I was an honorary bridesmaid in her wedding!