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How do sellers have such great deals on bulk lots of pins?

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How do sellers have such great deals on bulk lots of pins?

BilgeRat

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I saw an eBay auction for a bulk lot of 50 open edition rack pins (not the bulk lots of scrappers). The seller indicated they were on the original cards, with the Disney price tag (or color-code tag) and correct SKU. Most of the pins are currently on Disneyland's or WDW's racks. Some pins are very new releases. The price per pin was $2.30, which I almost thought was too good to be true.

I took a chance, and bought the lot. The pins just arrived, and they are excellent! They all appear to be legitimate rack pins on original Disney backer cards. A quick estimate suggests that I paid roughly 1/4 to 1/3 full-retail price.

The seller's location was close to one of the parks. How do sellers get these pins? I know that some folks buy collections; is this how they do it? It just seems odd because some of these pins are so new, that I would think there would not be anybody selling a collection with these new pins in it.

Is there some other angle I'm missing? Could it be I've been scammed, and the pins aren't legitimate at all? Are they stolen? Do Cast Members get ridiculous discounts?

I'm perplexed how folks are able to offer deals like this. Any insight?
 
From my understanding - I've asked very similar questions - there are two options, and you've hit on both: theft or cast discount.

With the pins being so new, I'm not sure that the discount makes sense, but I'm not sure, I don't know what the discount is. That said, there are huge rings of thieves who steal stuff from the parks and sell them, which is unfortunate for sure. Someone else can probably give better insight.
 
The vast majority of the time, it's theft. Especially when you're dealing with super new releases. They walk into the park with empty totes and just dump them into them.

There's a store at a local flea market I used to love to visit. They buy collections, so sometimes they have nice, older stuff. But last time I was there, they had brand new releases, on card, for less than 50% of the retail price. There's NO WAY they were making a profit unless they paid zero for them in the first place. I don't know if they were doing the stealing themselves, or if they bought them for cheap (like a "collection") from a third party who were the thieves. But even if they weren't the thieves, I feel like they knew what they were doing (they seemed to know they were brand new releases). And eventually people always go "How is this price possible? How are they even making it worth the effort of selling?", just like you did.

I pretty much don't go there anymore since I caught on to what they were doing. Such a shame, because I know they were buying legitimate collections, as well.
 
On the positive side, I recently was invited to go to the cast member store called Company D, near DLR, wow! Everything was 50% off and they had a small display of New Pins on their original cards marked at $3 each regardless of the original price, most were OE. I'm not sure if cast members get an additional discount but it's a possibility for some of the low bulk sales. Hope this is another possibility and at least they're legit park pins, now I know where discontinued pins go, besides the outlet stores.
 

This has been in existence for YEARS!! I've been to Company D many times over the years and every now and then they would have a BIG blow out sale and mark down all the "bins of pins" to $1.00 each ... this has gone up over the years to $2.00 then $3.00. It's been awhile since I've been there but I'm sure they still do this. Florida has even more pins and bigger sales, at times, to their cast members and "clearance" sales. In times past these sales included Disney Auction pins and DisneyShopping.com pins, unsold even pins, etc!

There are "some" reputable sellers on the Bay that offer genuine, legitimate Disney pins at 40-50% (or a bit more) off retail prices ... thank goodness! :hsd:
 
Yeah, I would have believed that that might have been the case (especially years ago, when SALSA sales were common), EXCEPT that they were new releases. For new releases, there's not usually an explanation except theft.

Also, even if you grab some stuff from Company D or the outlets, there's not much of a point in turning around and selling them for those types of low prices/what they paod for them. Like, that's no profit? I can see doing it occasionally to purge your traders or what-not, but as a general business practice, you're just wasting your own time and money. So I assume people who are doing it on ebay over and over again are making their profit somehow...so we're back at theft.
 
Is there still the problem of people buying fakes in bulk for cheap, setting up a cork board or pin book at Epcot tables, and then when a newbie trader sees the last pin they need to complete their Hidden Mickey or mystery pin set, "no problem, just go into the pin store and buy a rack pin to trade." Or with such limited options, have those people moved on and/or CMs watching closely for that?
 
I've found plenty of pins for less than $2 at the outlets and at Company D. Never new pins, though. Unless they're busted up that is. At the outlets you don't need to be a cast member, but at Company D you need to be a cast member to purchase pins.


I've been to the place you're talking about and I questioned them about it once and they said they bought it directly from Disney in bulk. I don't know if Disney even offers bulk prices for pins. I've also seen the owner try to buy pins off a cast member, knowing they can't do it. She asked way more than once on the subject. I've also seen them sell fakes/scrappers for $1.
 
I've been to the place you're talking about and I questioned them about it once and they said they bought it directly from Disney in bulk. I don't know if Disney even offers bulk prices for pins.
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I've heard this story, and I've also heard that they purchase pins from the same manufacturer that makes the Disney pins pursuant to a license granted to them by Disney. I think this is nonsense, as there is no way Disney would license someone to sell their official merchandise at a flea market. Disney cares way too much about maintaining the integrity of its brand.
 
I am not sure if I am looking at the same seller you bought from but I might be. Lot after lot of 50 pins or more on cards at about the price you said. I must be really naive because I have a hard time visualizing thousand upon thousands of pins being stolen by park visitors. I know these pin carts have only 1 person working it and probably hard to see a few pins being stolen maybe dozens stolen but the huge volume by just one seller never mind all the others? In my mind that volume would need to be stolen before they even got to the cart or store.
 

Yeahhhhh. I definitely don't feel like I'll be buying from them anymore. I would really like to see a nice flea market booth in Central Florida that is legit one of these days...::sigh::

And I'm with you guys...I don't buy the, "Disney sells in bulk" thing. First of all, I've never heard of Disney outsourcing these pins. Sometimes, they make OTHER pins for other retail outlets, like Wal-Mart and Target. But not little flea market booths. Second, I dount they would let anyone undercut their own prices...? Like, they want you to buy from THEM, not some rando.


Well, it definitely happens. It's likely multiple teams, who hit multiple locations. The same kind of thing happens in regular retail stores, as well. I know that at my job we've had teams we've had to look out for. There's an infamous seller in a city near Orlando who sells tons and tons of booster sets for $5 a pop on Craigslist. There's pretty much no other explanation...?

I mean, the only other thing I can think of would be if they had an inside person in China that's stealing them before they can come here (like, not scrappers, but the approved pins ready to come here). But considering pins on backing cards are probably already part of an inventory system, and therefore accountable, and the person over here would still be paying shipping from China, I'm thinking it's much more likely that they're stealing off the rack here with no real cost to themselves. Especially since we know thieving rings like this exist in Orlando.

It's definitely possible to find pins from official channels at the prices the OP mentioned. It's also possible to occasionally find some trader or seller who is legit and just passing them along at the price they paid for them. What's not likely is a wide variety of sellers doing it over and over without raising the prices to at least $5 per pin (if they're getting them for approx. $2-3). There would literally be no point in having a business in which you bought a bunch of pins for $2.50, then turned around and sold them for $2.50. Not only are you NOT making money, you're losing money in ebay fees and shipping! Sellers aren't THAT alturistic.

Occam's Razor, folks.
 
Thanks, everyone, for spending the time to discuss this! I'm resigned to the fact that these pins are likely stolen. Now I feel a bit dirty just for having bought them!

On another note, and hijacking my own thread, I've never heard of the a Disney Outlet Store. Where are these stores?
 

They're all over the country! Just check the outlet mall nearest to you to see if they have one. Sometimes, though, they're more like actual Disney Stores (that you find in malls) that are just leasing space in an outlet mall. A true Disney outlet will have Parks merchandise, and items will be a good amount off (usually around 50% off) retail. They do have some pins, but how many...that will vary location to location. They used to have AWESOME pins, back in 2006ish. Like, jumbos and all sorts of sets and stuff. Nowdays, not only is Disney not producing as many of those types of pins, but even if they do, the extras tend to go to Compnay D, rather than the outlet. It's not as exciting as it used to be.

I still like to go for clothes and housewears and Duffys.
 
On the legitimate side, I have a friend of a friend who buys collections. He really only buys them for the LE pins. Most collections have tons of OE/HM pins, but the LE pins are the ones that have real value, and he explains that to the sellers, and really only pays for the LE pins. He then turns around and sells the LEs at a huge markup from what he paid and then has a bunch of OEs/HMs he can sell for around $2/pin.
 

Another possibility is they are buying fake pins from China and they are replicating the cards also. Think about it, if they can fake the pins the cards are much easier to fake. I just ran into a scam on the princess cameo pins. I bought sealed boxes from 2 different sellers on the big auction site and all of the boxes contained pins that were silver metal not gold as they are supposed to be. They claim they bought them at Disney. Right and I am the pope.
 

Think about it - the Flea Market booth & others are probably buying the "real Disney" items from China. The factory is just making MORE than Disney asked for & is selling the "extra" to Chinese buyers who are selling them to people here. Lanyards, backer cards and all are probably real - just NOT from Disney.

If the Chinese buyers are getting at the same price as Disney pays, the items can be sold cheaply and everyone still makes money.

Just my opinion.
Sue
 
bookhugger said:
^^didn't Disney re-release the princess cameo pins? I know they are now different sizes than before from what I've been reading on the FaceBook pages
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Could you send me any information you have on them? It would be a first for Disney to rerelease mystery pins if they did. I am not on facebook. I think I am the last holdout.
 
The open edition mystery pins they re-release all the time. Some series have been available for years, and have to be from different manufacturing batches. Limited Release pins not so much, but the year long LR pins like the alphabet ones, characters & cameras, PT52s, etc have had different batches. Someone said, somewhere that Disney had changed factories recently, so that also explains why pins change too. And why sometimes it's so hard to keep what is a bad pin and what is a manufacturing batch change.
 
docfish2u said:
Can anybody who is near a park verify that the cameos mystery boxes are for sale again please?
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If you have the WDW Parks Shopping App, you can see that they are listed in stock at WDW in basically all locations. Or you can have them shipped to you. They aren't a discontinued item.
 
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That's a high possibility given that it's been done before, but that does make them scrappers technically.
 
bookhugger said:
^^didn't Disney re-release the princess cameo pins? I know they are now different sizes than before from what I've been reading on the FaceBook pages
Click to expand...

Do you mean the Tokyo Disney princess cameo pins of Rapunzel, Cinderella and Ariel? They have been re-released with slight size and colour differences but I haven't heard anything about the Mystery Box cameos that David is talking about.
 
katelouise said:
Do you mean the Tokyo Disney princess cameo pins of Rapunzel, Cinderella and Ariel? They have been re-released with slight size and colour differences but I haven't heard anything about the Mystery Box cameos that David is talking about.
Click to expand...

No it is the princess mystery box set released at WDW and Disneyland.
 
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