Frustrated by pin suspicions

There have always been a certain amount of counterfeit and scrapper pins from the earliest years of pin collecting.

But some days it just seems like the fakes are exploding into the market at a faster pace than ever. And I'm wondering if it's because there are more counterfeit and scrapper pin sellers out there, if there are more fake pins being made, or if we're just more aware of it and it just makes everything seem suspicious.

The reason I was pondering this today is that currently two more of a VHTF pin I'm seeking are up for sale on ebay.

It's one of a handful of pins I still need to finally complete my Wonderland collection after many years of searching and it's one of the few left that's not in a framed set (framed set pins are even harder to track down). But I'm not going near the ones currently for sale on ebay because I'm nervous about how many have suddenly shown up in the past few weeks. The ones up for sale now are the third and fourth in recent weeks/months when previously this pin wouldn't show up on ebay that many times in a year - and if it did show up, it was generally from one of the known high end pin sellers - the ones who buy whole collections for resale individually.

Could it be people just are liquidating right now and these all are legit? Yes. Does it make me nervous when multiples of a previously rare pin show up in a short period of time? Yes. Which is why I'm sitting out on any of the ones currently on ebay. All the counterfeit pins in the market make me more nervous than ever that anything could be a fake (and I've been burned on ebay before with fakes) and I'd rather wait to hopefully someday find one with a legitimate history - like someone I know getting rid of a collection - than risk the ones currently out there of unknown provenance.

As I said, I'm not sure if there are more fakes, more fake sellers or we're just more aware of them now and that skews how we look at every pin. What do you think? And are you hesitating on buying too without knowing the seller or knowing a pin's history?

Would you be able to tell if the seller sent a few more pictures? Maybe that could put you at ease or tell you that your suspicions were correct. I'm not so good at recognizing fakes myself and may even have a few in my collection. Since I'm not selling or trading them, I can't say that it bothers me much. If I find out that I have a fake I guess I can try to replace it with a real one, but in the end, it's the same art/design.

I just had the same thoughts last night! All this talk about splurging on grails, and I unexpectedly made a trade for an Alice pin that I never thought I'd own, so I figured I'd take a look at what was on Ebay. I was looking at Alice stuff and seller's other listings, and then I got to thinking that there were a bunch of suspicious pins that got talked about over on Dizpins (I saw the WDI Haunted Mansion E ticket and that got me thinking) that I don't remember what they were. So that knowledge base is basically gone at this point. And then I started wondering about how long "cold seller" type people were active without us knowing about it, so how many pins are in collections that they thought were legitimate but were really the extras. It makes me very sad, and very hard to justify spending even $30 on a pin.

So I gave up looking for the high end stuff, and started looking at pins to complete some of my DL LE series pins. And many of the sellers selling the stuff I was interested in, are questionable to me. It makes sense they would have legitimate pins because I'm sure when the word got out things were for sale originally, everyone would rush to the park and scoop up as many as they could. But you can't help but wonder were these actually the pins sold in the parks...or "cold seller" type stock.

So yeah, I don't know what to do.

tiggeriffic said:

Would you be able to tell if the seller sent a few more pictures? Maybe that could put you at ease or tell you that your suspicions were correct.

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Good question, but that wouldn't help my concerns - that doesn't tell me the weight/the feel of it or, more importantly to me - the history of the pin. Even if it's stated by someone on ebay - I don't know if they're telling the truth or not or if they even know where it came from.

I can give provenance for every pin I'm selling here. I can tell you exactly where (i.e. directly from Disney) or exactly who (the other trader/buyer) I got a pin from and when I got it. And I'm a known collector who has been part of the online and local pin community going on a decade who is not going anywhere. And that's what I look for as well at this point when I'm buying a pin - especially an old, rare, expensive one.

So while I used to trust pictures or feedback on ebay, I don't anymore. I used to trust that most pins weren't faked. I don't anymore. The best I can do is either get a pin directly from someone I know or know of, who can tell me where they got their pin or who at least has had it for many, many years in their collection - or go by the rest of what that seller is selling - and that's not always enough of a determining factor.

So I'm back to even less ways to get one of the pins I'm still missing. And although it seems like the closer you get to complete, the easier it should get, it's really the opposite. If I haven't gotten these pins in almost a decade of fulltime searching - they're that much harder to find now, especially with the added concern of paranoia of "anything could be fake!"

I sympathize. I'm pretty sure I've been burned by one of these counterfeiters; a too-good-to-be-true purchase that I snapped up on ebay, and then later noticed the seller had several more of this LE25 item. From a framed set. Not bloody likely! I still have the pin on my display board, but I would never trade it; it's almost certainly not real. (I had no proof so I didn't take it up with the seller, just wrote it off as a learning experience.)

I haven't been in pin trading long enough to know whether there are actually more counterfeits out there, or whether we're just more aware of them. Or, as another thought, whether they're just getting bolder, selling many of a very low LE item when they used to keep to more "safe" pins to counterfeit.

I wish I had any ideas for a solution. All we can do is be wary, I guess.

Edit: I know you can't mention sellers' names, but can you mention which pins?

It's one of my signature pins. And hint: it's not Walt, nor the framed sets.

There's every chance the pins are legit, but... again between so many showing up all at once and my not knowing the sellers...

And yes, I've been burned on rare pins suddenly showing up, my going for it and then 25 more show up.

So I caught the one that just closed. From France, joined ebay in 2009, 278 feedback, split about half and half. Older seller feedback seems to be for clothes, and looks like they sell some stuff every few months. Several of those have been for DA 100 pins, and seems to have multiple from the same set like the Cheshire World Tour, and Donald in Pinocchio. That on its face does not strike me as suspicious, and what I would reasonably expect from a collector liquidating. The Hep cat theme also seems something that would be attractive to a French person, with the berets. I may avoid France, just because if anything goes wrong, international can be frustrating.

The 2nd one is a seller, I've seen before. 3100 feedback since 2004, I still consider that in the reasonable range. Only selling the one pin. Alices-house-of-treasures is following this person, don't know how you feel about that seller. Mostly seller feedback recently, but if you go back to their buyer feedback, 5 pages and older, it's predominately all Disney Auctions, so they bought a lot of stuff direct, back in the day. My initial thought is someone saw that you were wanting it, and so put it up!

I don't know if this helps, but this is a bit of walkthrough of my Ebay process.

Looking at the one that sold in Dec. I actually bought something from that seller last week. I trusted it because they were selling a wide variety of DL pins from the early days, including pre-official pin trading. What I was buying came with the stamped passport from the 44th birthday. I get more of a collection liquidation vibe. For what it's worth, the pins are all great, the passport still had it's plastic holder. Packaging was a little weird, but well wrapped. I just didn't get a feeling of trying to rip someone off, but who knows.

The one from Oct seems like too little information to judge from volume and length of time. But a fair amount of household goods, to start selling, and other DA pins have their cards and baggies.

Either these guys are superior than most in their getting fakes in the marketplace, or it's just a bit of clustering timing.

I would ask them how they acquired the pin & what condition it's in. If they're not very responsive, I'd avoid them. It's hard to say.... we just came across a box of pins that my husband had purchased early in his collecting days, which we've recently added to our traders, so it's not unusual for that to happen to others.

hopemax said:

I don't know if this helps, but this is a bit of walkthrough of my Ebay process.

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And what you say has logic to it. I am not interested in the BIN even if I knew the seller because it's WAY more than what I'd pay for that pin (as was today's - even if I totally trusted it was authentic). The first one is the only one that went for close to what I would consider, but I missed that one when it sold. Actually I missed both of the first two and only noticed them when I randomly checked closed listings recently - and that's when I decided to keep an eye on what was happening with that pin - and then two more popped up. Just made me twitchy. Which was the point I was trying to make in the original post - are more bad pins showing up or are we more aware of the ones out there or are we becoming paranoid (quite possible lol)?

Is there any way of knowing whether a Disney pin is legitimate versus a fake?

Doc Goofy said:

Is there any way of knowing whether a Disney pin is legitimate versus a fake?

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The only guarantee is to buy the pin from Disney.

Oh, Jabberwocky, I feel your pin pain. I knew which pin you were talking about in the very first post because both auction notices came to me and my first thought was "Oh, man. Tell me they didn't counterfeit/scrapper an LE cat pin!"

But a few months ago a DS.com LE Si&Am cookie jar came up for auction. I had not seen one of those in several years and the final price went really high. Then the next week, another auction for the same thing came up, this time with a Buy-It-Now price for almost the same amount as the previous auction had ended. Funny enough, the auction took off and the final bid was actually considerably higher than the BIN price had been. A lot of times, people are waiting for someone else to be the "newest" seller of rarer items, that way if the item doesn't sell or there is a general lack of interest, the silent ones can wait longer until the item/character/theme is once again in demand and they can get rich(er) quick.

No one wants to get burned in a bad purchase though, but sometimes you have to just have a little faith. EBay is pretty good about ensuring buyers and sellers alike are well protected when items sold are not as they were listed. I have several extremely low LE pins I bought from there. Are they legit? They look so to me and the pins only make an appearance every few years. Is it possible they are cleverly constructed fakes and I'm living in pin denial about authenticity? Yep!
But in a world where only death and taxes are guaranteed, I'll chance it now and again for those pin rarities. :werd:

I like Club 33 pins. There's been a number of a few limited, and years-old, pins available lately. Many of the sellers have a decent history of selling Club 33 pins (not in huge numbers), so I'm not inclined to doubt them. But not all the sellers are as known, at least not by me.

It makes me wonder.

As Jabberwocky posted, these could just be pins coming out from collections now. A friend of ours has an acquaintance whose parent recently passed away, and they've been tasked with clearing out the Disney collection--so such pins could very well be from Boomers' collections. Unfortunately for our friend's acquaintance, a lot of this collection is common items not in high demand--I don't think any pins. :sad: Shucks. We advised friend to tell his acquaintance to check eBay for values, go to February's show if they can (LA area), or talk to some place like Howard Lowery Gallery or ThemeparkConnection for just clearing things out.

froggerway said:

Oh, Jabberwocky, I feel your pin pain.

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Thanks. It's good to be in good company.

EBay is pretty good about ensuring buyers and sellers alike are well protected when items sold are not as they were listed.

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But see, I've had the opposite experience where I spent hours dealing with them, yet ebay didn't protect me, resolve my problem, nor refund my money and the fake pin seller was allowed to keep selling! And that was on just one of the fakes I've been burned on there. So I don't have any trust in ebay to protect good buyers from bad sellers. Which adds to my paranoia I guess, knowing that ebay lies about "always protecting the buyer".

So I don't like to take such leaps of faith anymore.

But I'm glad to hear I wasn't the only one scratching my head to see rare pins pop up all at once!


And Propita, yes, I too have known people who've had to clear out family collections. It's reassuring to me if I can tell if it's an old-time collection being sold. But you can't always tell!

I agree with one of the things that froggerway posted- I feel like if a particularly rare pin hasn't been on an auction site for a long time, people might hold on to it until someone else sells one so they can get an idea of what people are willing to pay for it. I feel like I've seen that happen a few times where one pin sells and then about two or three more of the same HTF pin come out of the woodworks.

But I completely understand about wanting a sure provenance of the pins! Especially since I'm a Jessica collector, I try and get the pins I want as soon as they come out so they don't have time to be scrapped. Or I wait to trade here from someone who bought them straight from Disney.

I always try to be really, really careful about buying pins and researching for fakes, and I think I have a pretty good eye. But I do wonder if there are pins in my collection that are fake and I just don't know it...I hate the uncertainty!

Jabberwocky said:

But see, I've had the opposite experience where I spent hours dealing with them, yet ebay didn't protect me, resolve my problem, nor refund my money and the fake pin seller was allowed to keep selling! And that was on just one of the fakes I've been burned on there. So I don't have any trust in ebay to protect good buyers from bad sellers. Which adds to my paranoia I guess, knowing that ebay lies about "always protecting the buyer".

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As a buyer, you are completely protected. If you get something you don't like, send it back to the seller (with tracking) and had PayPal refund your money. It's that simple, and there's nothing _any_ seller can do to stop you from doing it.

it sucks for legitimate sellers tho as it gets abused all the time. (Like someone sending back a scrapper instead of the pin you sent, or just sending an empty box. All PayPal requires is a postal tracking number showing you sent something back. Sellers aren't protected at all, but buyers are.

rik1138 said:

As a buyer, you are completely protected. If you get something you don't like, send it back to the seller (with tracking) and had PayPal refund your money. It's that simple, and there's nothing _any_ seller can do to stop you from doing it.

it sucks for legitimate sellers tho as it gets abused all the time. (Like someone sending back a scrapper instead of the pin you sent, or just sending an empty box. All PayPal requires is a postal tracking number showing you sent something back. Sellers aren't protected at all, but buyers are.

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I'm sorry but you're wrong. I've had a seller scam me with a fake pin then play shenanigans with the return (which I won't detail as I don't want to give any lurkers any ideas) so that after my having spent HOURS on the phone with ebay along with multiple emails back and forth with ebay and PayPal, neither would refund my money even though I had returned the pin in the mail with tracking. So no, ebay does NOT always protect the buyer.

Pretty big reason why I don't trust anything to do with ebay anymore.

Caveat emptor.


EDIT: I will add that I have also had ebay do the right thing by me with a bad pin. The problem is, I can't trust what response I will get - the ebay who protects the buyer or the ebay who doesn't and that unpredictability makes me unable to trust ebay.

Clustering with rare eBay listings can happen IME. I've been scouring eBay for my wants every few days for years, and only late last year did FOUR Figment pin+sculptures show up almost at the same time, all from different sellers. It's almost as if the sellers were checking eBay themselves, saw the first person list the sculpture and think to themselves: "hey, I have that too, I should list it."

I realize that's a sculpture, so a little harder to counterfeit than a pin, but still goes to show clustering can happen. Another example, the Figment lanyard in my signature was listed three times from different sellers a year back. Since then I haven't seen it at all. :shrug:

I also wanted to note that scrappers from framed sets are the absolute worst. Especially if there's only one pin of the set that fits in your collection, they cater to those of us who want to save money by making us think someone has broken up the set. I have multiple scrapped pins I acquired this way. Eventually I had to buy the framed sets at considerable expense to make sure I had legit pins. It is very frustrating!

GreyWyvern said:

I also wanted to note that scrappers from framed sets are the absolute worst. Especially if there's only one pin of the set that fits in your collection, they cater to those of us who want to save money by making us think someone has broken up the set. I have multiple scrapped pins I acquired this way. Eventually I had to buy the framed sets at considerable expense to make sure I had legit pins. It is very frustrating!

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I feel your pain on that one. Fortunately of the four framed sets I still need pins from - I want at least two of the full framed sets anyway because they're so nice looking (at least, from the pics - I've never seen any of the ones I'm still missing in person), so I don't mind having to get the whole set. And I'd buy the other two framed sets in a heartbeat too, given the opportunity. But I hate ANY pin being faked.

Jabberwocky said:

I'm sorry but you're wrong. I've had a seller scam me with a fake pin then play shenanigans with the return (which I won't detail as I don't want to give any lurkers any ideas) so that after my having spent HOURS on the phone with ebay along with multiple emails back and forth with ebay and PayPal, neither would refund my money even though I had returned the pin in the mail with tracking. So no, ebay does NOT always protect the buyer.

Pretty big reason why I don't trust anything to do with ebay anymore.

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If you filed a claim through PayPal and provided proof of shipping (tracking), then they should have refunded your money. I'd be curious to know why PayPal would agree to give you your money first, then refuse after you ship the item back (that's how the process works, _they_ tell you when to ship, and when the USPS website shows delivery, your money is returned. There's no communication with you or the seller, it all happens automatically.)

If they didn't, file the chargeback through your credit card company. They WILL honor the claim and give you your money back.

The buyer is always protected, that has been a staple of credit card purchases since the 70's (at least), and hasn't changed... And it's also why PayPal has this policy, because they know you can just do it through your credit card company.

rik1138 said:

If you filed a claim through PayPal and provided proof of shipping (tracking), then they should have refunded your money.

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Yes, they should have but they didn't because as I said there were shenanigans by the seller with the return that again I'm not giving anyone else the loophole of what they pulled. So no, I don't trust ebay or paypal to honor their "buyer protection policy" because they didn't when someone found a way to scam around them.

Point is as I said, no, ebay and paypal do not "always" protect the buyer. I spent a lot of hours of wasted time with them finding that out.

Jabberwocky said:

Yes, they should have but they didn't because as I said there were shenanigans by the seller with the return that again I'm not giving anyone else the loophole of what they pulled. So no, I don't trust ebay or paypal to honor their "buyer protection policy" because they didn't when someone found a way to scam around them.

Point is as I said, no, ebay and paypal do not "always" protect the buyer. I spent a lot of hours of wasted time with them finding that out.

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Well, like I said, it's automated now. When did this happen?

what about filing the claim with your credit card company?

if you are willing, I'd love to know the details of the 'shenanigans', send me a PM about that. I've had buyers screw me over, but PayPal has always refunded my money, even when they didn't take it from the buyer...

But the ultimate solution is to just file with the credit card company. They WILL refund your money...

Rather than going around in circles about how bad ebay is, can we return this thread to the topic, please? Do people think there are there more fake pins nowadays or are we more paranoid or are we more paranoid because there are more fake pins?!

I'm a comparatively new trader , sadly fakes have always been part of the hobby . I am noticing more fakes of the better pins (non hidden mickey / booster) than before . I do also think though it's partly because we as a group are getting better at spotting and rejecting them , and sharing the details via social media .

rik1138 said:

Well, like I said, it's automated now. When did this happen?

what about filing the claim with your credit card company?

if you are willing, I'd love to know the details of the 'shenanigans', send me a PM about that. I've had buyers screw me over, but PayPal has always refunded my money, even when they didn't take it from the buyer...

But the ultimate solution is to just file with the credit card company. They WILL refund your money...

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If you lose the claim with paypal, and then file a chargeback claim, you will get your money back on your credit card.

BUT paypal will then take the money from your paypal account, making it a negative balance. So you would need to replenish it before you buy something on paypal again. And if you dont replenish it, paypal will take you to collections.

So determine the amount it is, and whether you want to fight that battle.