As for "lanyard stripping" it is a daily business for a lot of pin sharks, the big pins only come out occasionally and you know they need to make money for stuff like 40's, weed and video games so they flip HM's, boosters and rack pins that they get for pennies from cast lanyards. They take other unemployed "friends" and or use children to get them. They then sell them to people that actually know what they are buying and want authentic pins, they tend to get a much better price that simply the "tradeable pin lots" Remember the recent wave of HM pins? Those Pascals alone were selling for over $20 a piece...it was uuuuugly out there and the problem only gets worse as more and more of that population learns that pin flipping beats burger flipping.