New, Confused, and Conflicted
Hello All,
I'm new here. My family and I just got back from a trip to WDW where we discovered the sport of pin trading. It started with getting a starter lanyard set for my 10 and 12 year old. It ended with my 17 year old and myself with a lanyard and my husband scouting CM with lanyards for us to trade with. One night while in my hotel room, I thought, "There has got to be a way to get more pins for less." Low and behold, I found lots of 25, 50, 100, etc pins on eBay for a cheap price and sellers who would overnight our pins to our hotel. Of course I jumped on them and bought 100 pins to be overnighted to us. Well, the seller messed up and sent the pins to our house. SO, still determined, I found a guy on the local craigslist who had lots of pins for a cheap price. I contacted him and delivered us 100 pins to our hotel in like 15 minutes. I was stoked! We filled up our lanyards and the fun began. We had a blast!
It wasn't until I got home and started researching Disney pins to death (because that is what I do) that I learned about scrappers and fakes. I was bummed with all I read. I'm sure that all or a very high portion of the pins we received are not authentic and now I wonder about all the pins that we traded for. I think that a good portion of the pins we now have on our lanyards are probably also scrappers/fakes. Since we are new, we only traded with CM's and the bulk of our pins are HM or booster pack pins. It is so confusing to try and determine if a pin is good or not. We do have some rack pins that we actually bought so I know those are real. For those pins that we traded for, there are just so many variables to determine authenticity. Here is where my conflict begins. Personally I don't care if the pins that I have are scrappers/fake. The pin looks good and I like it but I do feel a little bad for trading off crap pins. On the other hand, if I personally don't care (and honestly can't tell what is real or fake) then I can't justify paying the extra money to end up trading for a crap pin. On the third hand, I feel that I can never trade with someone other than a CM since I don't know if a pin that I have is good or not. I would really love to go to a pin trading event (like the Swap till you drop meet in NJ next month or a Disney pin trading night) but fear that they are 1) full of hard core traders with only expensive pins and 2) can't trade anything because our pins may or may not be fake. I'm thinking about going to the meet next month anyway just to learn and oogle over other people's collections but it sure would be nice to be able to join in on the trading fun.
Thanks for reading!
~Bryana
I'm new here. My family and I just got back from a trip to WDW where we discovered the sport of pin trading. It started with getting a starter lanyard set for my 10 and 12 year old. It ended with my 17 year old and myself with a lanyard and my husband scouting CM with lanyards for us to trade with. One night while in my hotel room, I thought, "There has got to be a way to get more pins for less." Low and behold, I found lots of 25, 50, 100, etc pins on eBay for a cheap price and sellers who would overnight our pins to our hotel. Of course I jumped on them and bought 100 pins to be overnighted to us. Well, the seller messed up and sent the pins to our house. SO, still determined, I found a guy on the local craigslist who had lots of pins for a cheap price. I contacted him and delivered us 100 pins to our hotel in like 15 minutes. I was stoked! We filled up our lanyards and the fun began. We had a blast!
It wasn't until I got home and started researching Disney pins to death (because that is what I do) that I learned about scrappers and fakes. I was bummed with all I read. I'm sure that all or a very high portion of the pins we received are not authentic and now I wonder about all the pins that we traded for. I think that a good portion of the pins we now have on our lanyards are probably also scrappers/fakes. Since we are new, we only traded with CM's and the bulk of our pins are HM or booster pack pins. It is so confusing to try and determine if a pin is good or not. We do have some rack pins that we actually bought so I know those are real. For those pins that we traded for, there are just so many variables to determine authenticity. Here is where my conflict begins. Personally I don't care if the pins that I have are scrappers/fake. The pin looks good and I like it but I do feel a little bad for trading off crap pins. On the other hand, if I personally don't care (and honestly can't tell what is real or fake) then I can't justify paying the extra money to end up trading for a crap pin. On the third hand, I feel that I can never trade with someone other than a CM since I don't know if a pin that I have is good or not. I would really love to go to a pin trading event (like the Swap till you drop meet in NJ next month or a Disney pin trading night) but fear that they are 1) full of hard core traders with only expensive pins and 2) can't trade anything because our pins may or may not be fake. I'm thinking about going to the meet next month anyway just to learn and oogle over other people's collections but it sure would be nice to be able to join in on the trading fun.
Thanks for reading!
~Bryana