Help I need help getting my pins organized

I need some help how do you all organize all your pins. Trades, owns. I have pins all over the place, PLEASE HELP ME!

First of you HAVE TO separate Traders from Keepers. Thats is an ABSOLUTE must because it makes it easy for everyone looking at your book to know what is available. Personally, my keepers stay home on a board or on a lanyard I wear.

The rest is up to you.

I have seen some people separate their pins by value which is useful. I have seen some separate by character which is also cool. Most people put hidden mickeys on their own page aside from the rest because those are typically traded for others of the same.

Aside from that it's pretty much whatever you feel like

^^What they said. Keep your traders in one area, your collection in another. I'm in the process of painting cork boards to put my collections on; my traders are kept in pin trading bags

LOL. Sometimes I feel like I'm drowning in pins, too.

But to answer your question, I keep my pins organized by theme on several small cork boards I bought from Wal-Mart. When I get a certain amount of pins that fit a theme (character or movie) I like, I've begun displaying them in their own frames, as you might have seen on some of the threads I've started in the past few weeks.

My traders are on their own special cork board most of the time - Just my personal preference, because I prefer to see everything I have at one time, instead of shuffling through pages in a book or whatever. (But then, I have just over 100 pins. If I had a thousand or more, like other people on this forum, I might prefer to keep them organized in books or albums.) If I'm going to the park or an event, I remove my traders from their cork board and put them in my small pin bag temporarily.

Ha ha, it's a never ending struggle. But I finally, FINALLY wrangled all my pins into order. The first step was having enough pages & binders to store them all.

I have my binders labeled so I know what is in each one. Then I sat down and sorted all my pins by binder. This took a lot longer than I had planned, because I had pins sharing pages that shouldn't have been, once my collection had grown. So I had to dismantle a lot of pages to get them in the right place.

Also, I had to decide how I wanted to sort some stuff. If a pin fit into a series and also was part of a theme collection where did I want it? I ended up keeping series together (so I could eventually frame them) and not with themes. Holiday pins were another toughie. I mostly have kept my holiday pins separate so that when the holiday comes around I can change out the frames in my living room.

Once I had done a rough sort, with piles all over the floor, I started putting series away, then themed collections, then whatever was left after deciding if I really wanted to keep it. I collect bunches and bunches of stuff, so to give you an idea on my piles I would have: DL (broken down to park, CM, travel company), WDW (broken down further to each park, and then a resort pile, celebrations, CM, POM), Holiday (broken down into the individual holidays), Dumbo, Alice, BatB, Pluto, Figment, Hidden Mickey. I also have a binder just for Epcot Pin Event pins, Disneyana pins (not much to add there, but I get an older pin from time to time). And I tend to keep my WDI/Soda Fountain pins together, and then a binder for random pins from foreign parks and DCL.

My trades are completely separate from my owns. I have a large card box (think for holding baseball cards or Magic/other CCG cards) to store pins on cards. I have a pin bag to store pins without cards, and I have a box from Ikea to hold things that are too big (jumbos, boxed gallery pins, pin cards).

So right now I have a little over 1000 pins. I keep two books of traders that come with me and the rest stay at home in binders or books. For example I have binders labled "disneyshopping" or "WDI" and I keep those on shelves in a bookcase. It seems to be pretty orgainized and easily accessible. Then I also have a book for sets that I've completed or have yet to be complete.
Depending on how many you have just keep them on cork (less) or binders and books (more) and orgainize them by place you bought them or character or both!
Good luck!

I have my keepers by collection. Traders by sets. If they're vinyl, they go into the vinyl bag divided into their own sets, etc.

Oh and I'll usually do my limited editions/limited releases in two separate binders with the baseball card holders so they're easily accessible.
Hidden Mickey's go in one book, etc. It's a loooooong process for us people whom have over 1000 to do. I have duplicates/triples/quads of my traders so if you could imagine how many I've got you'd imagine how many books I have to take with me to PTNs.

all are keepers are divided in bins. we have about 4000 keepers. it is all my traders that is all over the place most in bins and all over coffee table and bins about 2000 it is crazy just dont know where to start... thanks for the suggestions.

I've been trading less than a year and have fewer than 100 pins, I think (I only *wish* I were drowning in pins!) and don't live near any parks, so can't go to pin trading events. So it's a little different for me. I don't have the necessity of a pin book at all, since there's nowhere for me to take them to trade. I made one AiW themed board that my collection has about outgrown, so I'm working on a second themed board to display them (I like to look at them all, not have them hidden in pages.) I also got a separate plain board to put my definite traders on.

The keepers vs. traders thing is a bit difficult, because there are some that I mean to be keepers, but would trade away if it got me one of my grails. So those go on the keeper boards, since they aren't too likely to be moving.

I've been thinking about getting one of the small crossbody zippered pin bags to take some of my good traders on my trip to DLR this coming October. That way if we happen by one of the areas where the serious pin traders are, I'll have more on me than just my lanyard of small fun traders, but won't risk them falling off. That would just be for travel, though; I wouldn't store them there long-term.

torianne-2008 said:

all are keepers are divided in bins. we have about 4000 keepers. it is all my traders that is all over the place most in bins and all over coffee table and bins about 2000 it is crazy just dont know where to start... thanks for the suggestions.

Click to expand...

I've seen traders sorted a couple different ways. By rarity: so all the best pins on one page, high LE's on another, open edition on another. Personally, I have mine sorted by theme. So my bag has a page for: Stitch, Princess, Peter Pan, Pixar, Mickey&Friends, Theme Parks, Holiday, Hidden Mickey, and then a "catch all." That way I know exactly where to look for it. I don't get to trading events very often, but when I do, I find it easier to just be able to flip to a page, and here are all of someone's Alice pins. It means less flipping pages, because I like this one, this one and that one. But sorting by rarity probably makes it easier to decide to just grab one bag and go, instead of lugging everything. You can decide what "level" you feel like trading at that day, and have a little bit of everything theme-wise.