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So you say you would never buy scrappers

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How about this question. If you see someone at the parks trading their baggies with people (or cast members, not that they're not people, of course), do you call them on it or MYOB?
 
jjgasman said:
How about this question. If you see someone at the parks trading their baggies with people (or cast members, not that they're not people, of course), do you call them on it or MYOB?
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You can't really prove anything, especially if you can't see the pins close up. That's a MYOB scenario in my opinion. The only thing I might do is carefully mention something to the person (non-cast members) they are trying to trade the pins to but if the scrapper trader is in earshot that could turn very ugly. If they are dumping them on lanyards then that is Disney's responsibility and they need to step up.

I still believe that Disney should do away with the lanyards or completely revamp the way they are done. They are a key driver to this whole scrapper mess.
 
jjgasman said:
How about this question. If you see someone at the parks trading their baggies with people (or cast members, not that they're not people, of course), do you call them on it or MYOB?
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I'm going to step in here but I don't live near the parks so my experience is limited.

I would hope you wouldn't call anyone out because I might be one of those people with the baggies. I don't buy lots on ebay but I've bought several pin lots from people on the Dizpins and now DPF boards and sometimes those pins are sent in baggies. And when I'm in the parks, I keep my trader pins in my pocket or backpack because 1. I bring A LOT of traders, 2. lanyards get heavy when you're wearing them all day, and 3. I don't want to lose anything. Sometimes I don't take the time to take each individual pin out of the baggie before I trade it. But I do check it as I hand it to a CM and if it's bad, I'll grab another.

I guess my point is that just because a person has bags, that doesn't mean they're trying to pass scrappers and I sure hope no one would accuse me or anyone else of doing so without some kind of proof.
 
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erudolf said:
I still believe that Disney should do away with the lanyards or completely revamp the way they are done. They are a key driver to this whole scrapper mess.
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Disney did *something* ... They raised the pin prices on Disneystore.com, that is how they absorb the losses from the scrapper/counterfeit industry.

Well, kidding aside, I once had a conversation with a CM in World of Disney Store in DTD. First of all, he was rather surprised that a lay person even knew about the concept of scrappers.

I asked him if Disney was planning on doing something about the situation. He told me that they are told to trade with everyone as long as it said "Disney" on the back. He said that their managers brief them on the scrappers out there as far as designs go. They inspect the pins periodically and mark the suspicious ones to send to some dept. (I can not remember what exactly he said) to check for authenticity.

Think about it from Disney's point - What do they lose in terms of $$?

At least 70% of CM lanyards are full of counterfeit/scrapper pins. So people who try to dump scrappers end up trading them for different scrappers most of the time. Hence, Disney's only financial loss is in the fresh batch of authentic pins they put out there on CM lanyards. I think they are willing to absorb this loss, and we are paying for that in different ways when we buy souveniers, etc. $12 princess autograph book anyone?

I am not sure how fast the park pins sell, but as far as I have observed, they do not have any difficulty in selling their disneystore.com pins. If they put an LE cap on a design and sell all of the LE's at their set price what do they care? So, there is not much financial loss there either.

If an LE 250 design, suddenly becomes LE 500 after getting sold out by Disney, because another 250 scrappers come in, it is the collector's loss, not Disney's.

However, if they cancel pin trading or put limits on authenticity, then they risk annoying loads of people who happily come with their cheap Ebay pins, especially kids. I think it is easier for Disney to bear few disgruntled collectors instead of loads of disgruntled families with kids who are their bread and butter. For my first few WDW trips I used to read Disney Mom's Panel which boasts handpicked Disney experts to give advice for WDW trips. Even someone there endorsed buying pins on Ebay few years ago, in fact that is how I got my first batch of counterfeit traders 2 years ago.
 
Merryweather said:
Disney did *something* ... They raised the pin prices on Disneystore.com, that is how they absorb the losses from the scrapper/counterfeit industry.

...
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..this is true for all businesses..the costs (and losses) are passed down to the consumer..and the profits that are made from pins alone are huge..aside from the cost of the artists (they are Disney employees), the cost to actually make a pin is very small..

..and look at how much it costs just to walk in to a park..how much do you think Disney makes every day from the combined sales through their parks, stores, movies, online, etc???so, I don't think the fake pins have that big of an effect overall..the really stupid part to me, is that there are people that are willing to risk it all to sell fake Disney pins on a large scale..and risk going to prison..have you seen the show lock-up..uhhhhh..no thank you..

..when it comes to the onesie twosie park traders..myob..that's my opinion anyway..

..I mean, why are you at the park anyway..to have a good time..or to have confrontations over pins..
 
Jessica and I see this all the time. We never, ever just jump out of a crowd and confront them, nor do we outright accuse them of having fakes. Simply, when they approach our table and show us what they have to offer, we ask where they got them, politely and gently. Mostly, they say "Oh, you know, off cast members, and traders, that sort of thing." For that response, we usually just drop the subject and (gently) let them know they don't have anything we collect. Saying that is a big, huge help because we just tell them we collect Stitch, Jessica Rabbit, Mermaid, and Beauty/Beast, and they usually do not have any of those or if they do they are very small and we can say we already have them, and they leave right then and there, un-offended.

However, we get the honest person every once in a while that will admit to buying them on eBay. These are the truly innocent and naive; why else would they admit what they did? They really didn't think they did anything wrong, so why hide it? To these, we will make an exception. We gently and politely tell them that they might have scrappers and fakes and pull out one of our pamphlets for them to look at and we explain why we think their pins are fake. These people are earnestly astonished, a little embarrassed, and truly thankful. We tell them that we will trade them a real (rack) pin for two or three of the fake ones, then throw them away after we get them.

No confrontation, no conflict, happy trading, and we get NO FAKES.

And I know that not everyone that has pins in baggies is guilty of having fakes, but Jessica and I shudder whenever we have someone approach us with a bag of pins in those little baggies... Yikes!
 
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I bought pins from ebay when I first started pin trading. I'm sure almost everyone can say that they have or traded away a scrapper. I know better now, and I wish that these pins would just go away. I also wish that the people that work at the parks would go through the pins and get rid of the ones that are scrappers or fakes. This would be nice but very costly for them too.
 
Geoff said:
And I know that not everyone that has pins in baggies is guilty of having fakes, but Jessica and I shudder whenever we have someone approach us with a bag of pins in those little baggies... Yikes!
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We had a guy come up to us while we were trading with 2 CMs. I didnt think about it tell much later but he had a small baggy with a bowlin pin inside it. Looking back its not just the bag that was wrong but how it all went down. He tryed to shark us in the heat of the trade with cm. He said hey. I got 2 of these. I will give it up for that @#$%! mickey. I dont think a reg trader would b in such a rush and all alone with pins all bagged up and ready to trade. just seems a little odd. I dont know the man though. just how i feel looking back.
 
I did get some giggles out of this thread! Thanks for posting. I just spent 2+ weeks in China and did not see any Disney pins!! OK, so I did stop in Hong Kong and could not resist HKDL! I did have around 10 traders in the bottom of my purse!! I traded them for some of the mystery tin pins they have at HKDL because of course after I bought one tin, I could not stop until I completed the set!

Disney is now using the baggies! I bought some of the vinylmation JR mystery pin pouches and the pins are in those clear resealable baggies, so that is not a good way to tell the scrappers anymore!
 
This will only get worse once Shanghai DL opens. I pretty much CM trade now for for travel company and booster set pins. Sometimes I'll see a kid with a booster or starter set unloading on every CM in an area and then I just go around trading for everything he just unloaded. Got a lot of the cutie pins this way. I gave up on VM and HM.
 
I'm new to pin trading, but have looked at my collection and found 6 scrappers and one outright counterfeit that I traded for last week off a lanyard. ALL my "bads" have come off of cast member lanyards. I am fortunate my girlfriend works for the park and I have access to company D so I can get some traders fairly cheap considering. I do have one pin that ended up being something FAR different than what I was originally told it was, and I feel bad for having passed on the info despite never having traded it.
 
When I first started I bought a pin lot on eBay thinking they were real. Traded them at the park and it wants until later that month I discovered this forum and the rest is history. I admit I contributed to the growing scrapper epidemic on say lanyards and I have no really way to fix it. I just now buy everything or really check if I do trade off of CMs. I'm trying to ween away from them because a lot of their pins are fake, but I think also that's a new fun obstacle; for example, yesterday I found this tiana pin on a CM but it turned out to he a scrapper so I traded it four times (four different scrapers) until I found a real tiana pin. I think it's more difficult to pin trade at DLR now because of the amount of scrapers but it's exciting when you do find a real pin you like. :)
 
fluffystitch said:
When I first started I bought a pin lot on eBay thinking they were real. Traded them at the park and it wants until later that month I discovered this forum and the rest is history. I admit I contributed to the growing scrapper epidemic on say lanyards and I have no really way to fix it. I just now buy everything or really check if I do trade off of CMs. I'm trying to ween away from them because a lot of their pins are fake, but I think also that's a new fun obstacle; for example, yesterday I found this tiana pin on a CM but it turned out to he a scrapper so I traded it four times (four different scrapers) until I found a real tiana pin. I think it's more difficult to pin trade at DLR now because of the amount of scrapers but it's exciting when you do find a real pin you like. :)
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I love your attitude and the game you've invented, but the fact that this is the state of CM trading is absolutely shameful :(

Isn't there something that can be done? The amount of fakes has to be illegal at some level right?
 
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