So, one of my best friend's coworkers knew we traded pins, and he gave her a bag of pins he had collected over the years, as he doesn't trade or collect anymore. Which is already pretty cool, right? Free pins are always cool.
Upon sorting through the bag, we find a large handful of authentic 2015 hidden mickeys, which is also really cool, as it was a great year for hidden mickeys!
Here's the most interesting part though. He apparently used to be a merchandise coordinator for Disney, so he ended up with a lot of pins, and a lot of brand new ones right when they came out.
As it turns out, every single one of the above pins is an Artist Proof. I was looking at the backs closely to verify which ones were authentic when I realized two of the ones I'd looked at had APs. And then I started pulling more out that were APs. And then I realized they were all 2015 hidden mickeys. Even more interesting is that one of the Maleficent proofs has a pretty obvious error on it. Lol. Safe to say that one did not get approved for final production.
I was suspicious of the pins but I combed pinpics and eBay and none of these series seem to have known Artist Proof pins. He's also apparently had them sitting in this bag for years. My conclusion is that they're all legit and that's kind of wild.