Procedure for buying expensive pins?

Some of the grails I'm browsing are selling at $100, $300, & up. I'm not buying now, but will in the future, so I'm curious...

When you buy a costly pin, do you use auction sites or strictly in person meetup? Do you use a certain appraiser or insurer? I'm curious to learn how these transactions are handled.

Meanwhile, it's fun to browse the high dollar pins.

Try this:
Do an eBay search for disney pin -pins -lot -set -collection
Sort results by Price + Shipping: Highest First.

It makes me think of the movie Ronin. Some guy shows up in a suit, handcuffed to a metal briefcase. Inside is a single pin.

Far fetched, but there are expensive pins on my bucket list.

An appraiser? I am... not sure such things exist for pin collecting, though I've heard weirder schemes to make money off of people. In the world of Disney pins there is no stable or steady market value, because of how relative collecting is. A LE 100 Stitch pin might be worth 300 dollars to a collector of Stitch, but would not be worth 20 to someone who didn't collect Stitch, so there is no actual way to appraise it, not with any accuracy, since there are no real market figures for pins. LE doesn't mean anything either, I've seen LE 100's sell from 400 to 22 dollars, it all depends on the pin and who wants it and how popular the character is at current.

What is a pin ACTUALLY worth? It's a hunk of metal with enamel on it. Maybe three dollars if, you're lucky, in materials.

In person- You use your own senses to tell if it's fake or not. You can tell a bootleg right off, especially on a higher end pin.

On Ebay- You're insured for your purchase, so you return it if it's fake or damaged and if need be you file a claim with Ebay/paypal.

They're not made of precious materials (usually) and they don't really have any inherent value, save sentiment. Perhaps 50 years down the line they'll be considered a new art form and will be able to be appraised like a Picasso, but right now? This is a purely sentimental and personal market.

all my grail pins have been purchased through ebay, Ive made one trade in person as we agreed to meet when I visited paris and I had purchased pins for him so we could make the trade other than that its all been through ebay when purchasing my grail pins.

Here is my procedure: Save, save, save some more .... Ok, I am really close to my grail, but dagnabbit car insurance is due. Look at your grail on Ebay and drool, sigh, start saving again .... Rinse & repeat as necessary.

After a few months of collecting, I started eyeing the HTF pins. I was shocked at how costly they were, but the cost reflects the quality/design IMO. My procedure for buying expensive pins is pretty simple- do some research and make sure the pin has a "stable" value. If I'm gonna dish out $100-200 on a single pin, its nice to know that the pin has sold for that much recently and consistently. Its nice to ask around, especially some of the pin veterans here, and make sure the price is right. That way, if you ever decide to get outta pin trading you can recover some of the costs.

Its also helpful to just observe some of the auctions on ebay. See how much the more expensive pins sell for at auction, and keep them on your watch list for reference.

I bought the majority of my expensive pins ($80 to $400 each) in person, and most of the rest of my expensive pins I bought from one seller on eBay whom I trust.

(Online, I got caught up in a few auction frenzies when I was still new to buying; I overpaid for those early pins. Then the eBay seller I just mentioned told me how to snipe, which helped keep me in line--and is one reason I trust her.)

carolynhill said:

Then the eBay seller I just mentioned told me how to snipe

Click to expand...

At the risk of sounding like a complete moron, what does this mean?

It means you bid on the auction in the final seconds. You can either do it yourself, by waiting until it gets down to the last 4 seconds before you click on the confirm bid (this is what I do). Or there is a web service that will do it for you, Google eSnipe.

Waiting to bid accomplishes 2 things. You are forced to really consider your maximum bid since you only get one shot. Two, you don't give someone else time to reconsider THEIR maximum bid and outbid you.

Thanks for clarifying, hopemax! I kinda do this but didn't know there was a name for it!

The only pin I've bought that was expensive to me was an LE 25 of Simba that I bought for $165. I did it over the internet and a BIN on it. xP

I always try to snipe now when it comes to some of my pins now. I know it sucks for the other person but I never see why people bid on a pin that ends in 7 days as I prefer to wait till the last 12 seconds and ready to hit confirm bid.

Ive always had to look at getting my pins from ebay since when I started I was collecting UP pins so no one was selling them on dizpins at the time so I had to resort to ebay which did suck but since I was new it was quite an awakening to get as a noobie

hopemax said:

It means you bid on the auction in the final seconds. You can either do it yourself, by waiting until it gets down to the last 4 seconds before you click on the confirm bid (this is what I do). Or there is a web service that will do it for you, Google eSnipe.

Waiting to bid accomplishes 2 things. You are forced to really consider your maximum bid since you only get one shot. Two, you don't give someone else time to reconsider THEIR maximum bid and outbid you.

Click to expand...

Another useful thing about sniping with a service (like esnipe) is that you can retract or change your maximum bid at any time until shortly before the auction closes. If, in a spirit of excees, you set the maximum price too high, commonsense can kick in later, and you can set it to a lower maximum. Or if suddenly someone offers the same pin for a BIN that's lower than the auction you're currently sniping, you can cancel your snipe and pay the BIN for the new pin.

is that free or does it cost money

Using esnipe costs money. If you win the auction, they charge a fee.

[TABLE="class: newBorder, width: 563"]
[TR]
[TD]Auction wins for under $25[/TD]
[TD]$0.25[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Auction wins between $25-$1,000[/TD]
[TD]1% of auction price[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Auction wins for $1,000 and over[/TD]
[TD]$10.00[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

If you don't win the auction, you don't pay a fee.

They have a free trial period, so you can see if you like it before you start paying the fee.

These are the ones that caught my attention, followed by their auction or BIN price. I will buy the first two eventually.

[PINPICS]57308[/PINPICS] : $168
[PINPICS]40357[/PINPICS] : $300
[PINPICS]59057[/PINPICS] : $144
[PINPICS]27076[/PINPICS] : $650

Does anyone know how to only search auctions that have bids?