Pin trading frustration. Time to vent.
+1000 You hit the nail on the head.
Just my recent experience as a new trader... I've been collecting pins since as early as 2003. I've recently gotten really hardcore about it in the last two years. Earlier this year, I decided that I would like to try pin trading. My experience with it has not been horrible but it has been tougher. I've met some really awesome people through pin trading. However, I quickly began to see a pattern that related to much of what Abyssian said about new traders and that was that it was hard to get GOOD trader pins that could match up in value to some of the pins I wanted.
I found that I was spending money on Ebay to acquire hard to find pins so I could trade them for some of my HTF wants (as recent LE pin releases aside from PODMs don't seem to measure up to DA pins or DS.com pins). I did that once, maybe twice and realized that I might as well just be plopping down the money to get a pin that I want than to get one that I may not even be able to trade properly. I had one pin in my traders previously (that I had bought off Ebay) that apparently was a DA pin, rare and had some number in the vicinity of 200 wants on PinPics. I purchased it excited that I could trade for one of my harder to get pin wants. I made reasonable trade offers for pins of similar value (DA pins with the same LE number as my pin or higher LE number than my pin and general same Ebay value as my pin). I rarely ever got any response despite this being an apparently "wanted" pin. One response that I did get, the person offered me a pin of significantly lesser value that was pretty easy to obtain and in the past had went for fairly cheap on Ebay. I didn't need to "trade up" but I'd have liked to keep the value fairly even.
Basically, I got the impression that people weren't much interested in trading evenly. It seemed to me that most wanted to trade their HTF pins (DA pins, DisneyStore.com...) for bigger, better, higher valued pins. I don't have any sour grapes or bitterness over it or anything. People are completely entitled to do what they want with their pins. This happened a few times with different pins and it wasn't just one incident unfortunately.
I wound up giving that pin to my grandmother because she saw it and fell completely in love with it. So the pin still turned out to be a good purchase in the end thankfully.
I cannot brave many a camp out that is almost required now to obtain the DSF pins. The best I can do is try and show up Saturday morning/early afternoon and hope that they have some left. So, I have pretty much given up on trading almost entirely. I still trade some basic OE pins that I can skip on over to DLR and pick up for some of my easier wants but overall I'm pretty much done trading. I find trading LE/HTF pins to be tough waters to navigate and that it is way easier and less stressful to just buy my LE/HTF pins that I want. I don't mean to sound bitter at all (on the contrary, I am okay buying my wanted pins) or throw a pity party for myself, it's just how it is.
Now about re-selling and those that hoard and sit on their pins... I don't get it either. I'm in the "their your pins, do what you want" category on this forum but to me (and I've said this before) it just seem silly, nay ludicrous, to sit on a pin hoping that it will sell for the high value that it did a year and half ago. In the mean time, you are stuck paying Ebay fees to continually re-list the same pin over and over again. I don't get it...
The fact of the matter is, is that about 85% of pins drop in value pretty quickly after their release. Why? Because new pins are always coming out and so excitement about current pins dies off. I've seen a trend like this with many of the recent DSF pins (aside from Beloved Tales series). Some pins, I really believe, will never decrease too much in value (Sleeping Beauty Gomes pin, R/C Rapunzel...) because they are already popular and are the pins that catch many newcomers' eyes. Plus, they were already extremely limited to begin with and are the pins that, as they pop up now and then and sell, collectors will snatch them up and probably never trade/part with them. The fact that some of these pins rarely ever go up for sale helps maintain their popularity as well. They are the pins that are pretty much always going to be "Drool Worthy". However, pins like these are rare and not the common trend. Point in being, if you are going to solely re-sell pins, sell fast otherwise lower your price expectations as time goes on I say.
All righty, I'm done now
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