Proactive Pin Search Tips?

Let me start off by thanking so many of you for helping me in my search and acquiring most of my Pop Century pins. This site is wonderful.

I'm down to needing only one pin...2003 WDI Pop Century\Mission Space\Philharmagic.

http://pinpics.com/cgi-bin/pin.cgi?pin=27514

If I may take some time to tell a couple of stories...

I also collect Disney records. My holy grail was a copy of "Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color" (1963). This record was at the time considered a kids LP. And you know how most of us treated our things as kids. So to find a copy, let alone one that's in excellent shape, is tough to do.

I'm a very proactive guy when it comes to Disney collecting. I did an online search for record stores throughout the country. I created a mass email that went out to about 100 stores. Got A LOT of undeliverable responses.

But I did get an answer from a small record store out in California. They had a copy that was still in it's shrink-wrap with the side slit in order to access the record. I was SOOO excited. It's in WONDERFUL shape and is truly one of the crown-jewels of my record collection.

I collect Disney Super8 films as well. Just this last month I was bidding on a lot of WDW and DL films because of just one film that was in excellent shape...Vacation Wonderland at WDW. I lost the listing. Was outbid at the last second.

Of course as you well know, you don't know who won the auction when it's over. So I waited for the buyer to post feedback for the seller. At that point you know who the winner is. I contacted the winner letting him know that I was only interested in that one film. Come to find out, he was doing the same thing but for a different film. We worked out arrangements for me to buy Vacation Wonderland and I now have completed my Disney Super8 collection. And I've got a new Disney audio\video buddy.

(Thanks for reading my stories.)

My point is that I'd like to be proactive in my search for this one Pop Century pin. I have tried to contact the two people on pinpics who say they have this pin but have gotten no response. And I've posted here on the Wanted forum.

Are there other websites for pins to try? Are there certain ebay sellers who would be good to contact? On another thread someone mentioned there are CMs and friends of CMs who sell on ebay. Who are these people so I can contact them?

I seen on some ebay listings where the seller will say, "if there's a certain pin you're looking for, contact me." I'm sure there are sellers with HUNDREDS of pins to sell and can't list them all. Just wonder if there are certain ones who would be a great resource.

Any help would be deeply appreciated?

Again, everyone here has been wonderful with helping me collect these Pop Century pins. Thank you very much.

I guess the real question is how much is this pin worth to you? I do not collect this type of pin. However, based on other like items, I would not be surprised that the low end value of this pin was between $30-$50. It would not surprise me if the value was much higher though. It is an imagineering only pin with two people trading which is almost 10 years old. While it doesn't have any of the super popular characters , this means the people who got it probably worked on the various projects and therefore it probably disappeared into their collections. As such, it means its going to be hard to find in the "wild".

I did notice that at least one of the people trading it has a direct email. Many traders dont like to sell pins (especially hard to find, rare pins), but prefer to trade pins for those rare to find pins that they want. I know if I was in that traders's shows, I would not sell it but be looking for either collection pieces or significantly better traders. Have you looked through his wants list, explained your situation and asked what he wants for it?

There is also a Disneyana convention in Dayton, OH this coming weekend (June 29-July 1). Some pin traders / sellers go there. You could stop by and see if anyone has leads on this pins.

You can also try some of the other Disney pin trading boards, such as Pintalk or Walt's Basement; however they appear to be smaller then DPF with a good number of crossovers. You might also try some of the more general Disney websites like Miceage or MousePlanet. Many of them or significantly larger then DPF with either collectable forums or pin forums.

Hope that helps.

kajtdd

Thanks for the tips kajtdd. I appreciate it.

I did contact the one person from pinpics. But unfortunately didn't get a response back.