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When will Disney Pin Trading cool off? Not go away....just cool off

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When will Disney Pin Trading cool off? Not go away....just cool off

NChouser

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It is going to happen. At some point. So when?


I remember back in 2000-2004 when baseball card trading was at its height. I was WAY to into it. I would buy a box of cards for $50 in hopes of finding a rare LE card with a signature or a piece of jersey.

I bought 1 box every other week (payday) and I remember pulling out a card. It was a Larry Bird / Wayne Gretzky / Joe DiMaggio piece of game worn jersey all on 1 card. That piece of cardboard sold for more than $500 back in 2003. Now that same card is listed on ebay over 10 years later for $119 with nobody even watching it. *** Just an example. There are some cards still demanding $1,200 ( TW and Jordan)

There are some holy grail names out there in the sports world for memorabilia but we are talking about a 10 to 1 fan base between sports card collectors and disney pin collectors.


It may not be next year or in even 5 years but at some point everyone will take a deep breathe and sit and go... I just spent thousands of dollars on pieces of metal....WTF!



I still love pin trading but I will beat the dead horse again...and again.... it is just mind boggling how these pins are going for crazy $$$$. I should just move and camp out next to DSF... live on the streets and just make a living off of hustling these pins! haha
 
Let me add that if I had the $$$ and it was literally like just sitting there... I would be right there spending it! haha

Then I would be in that group in 10 years scratching my head...
 
Seems the last mini bubble pop was 2010-2011? It was before I collected. I started in early 2011. It seemed like a lower point in the ebb & flow. Tangled pins at DSF made it to the sale bins. Disneyshopping was ramping down and Disney Auction pins were just too hard to get from people so they cooled off. WDI pins never really went for gobs of money. The recent up-tick is because of the DSF craze with being the only consistant and low-LE place to get pins. Then Tangled took off and princesses in general followed. Then marquees after the UP marquee sold for $400 in April 2011, PODM's jumped after Tangled too, then Beloved Tales took hold after marquee's prooved too difficult for people to collect, and now PTD's are gaining ground. Sure there were a few pins out there that were instant hits in the interim, but I don't recall very many Day-of-sale grail priced pins before DSF took off. Pins that were like $150+ the day you bought them.

Baseball cards did a lot of super low edition sizes. The crazy LE1's, LE5's, LE-25's, lots of LE less-than 100's and that is a bigger market. Disney rarely does anything under 300. The rare LE100, LE150, or LE200 pins that are WDI or DSF surprise or some other chaser pin. Those stupidly low LE designer pins. But they seem to be accepting our feedback about edition sizes. The designer sets have gone from 150 to 200 to 250. DSF went from 300's & 150's to 500's and 400's and a few 300's for PTD's. If Disney would embrace the hobby more and give us some support, say like more tables similar to what Disneyland Paris has at the Pueblo, the hobby could really take off. But they seem lazy and apathetic with the few tables we have, the lack of variety in pins, the constant reuse of artwork and the HORRIFICALLY run pin releases. But I still think it will climb. PODM's went away and this year has still been just as high as the last 2. I'd like to see more park LE releases, they really tanked this year. The annual passholder tickets are lame. The 4-pin stained glass thing is cool I guess. Those monthly easel pins are awful and kind of ambiguous with no real attraction or character on them. I quit those after like March. They need some good releases, less anniversary pins and just good old Matterhorn LE, Indiana Jones LE, character LE's, etc.
 
lol... as long as there is money to b made, we will see the same thing over and over. Cards are cool to talk about but the hobby is nothing like pins. Pins was started as a fun thing to do at the parks and to help make memories for Disney fans. Over the years that has gone away and we now have a bunch of people in the hobby that care nothing or very little about the history of Disney and the fun that was suppose to b part of pin collecting and trading. These are the same folk that move from hobby to hobby and try to make a living or pay bills off the back of a hobby.

The one thing that is very different in the card world is the grade houses. At least in the card world you don't have to worry about fakes or shark prices. There is a few books that come out each month and they give u a up to date price for the card. Almost no one in the card hobby ask for full book price. Cards are often sold for 70-90% of book price. Some card people even sell at 50% book price. The one thing u will never see is people trying to use e-bay as a guide to price. No one will open a pack of cards and try to sell it to you for 400% or more mark up the same day. That niceness is left for the pin world. lol
 
Pin trading appeals to families and children. It is one of the lower priced thing a person can do, even with the cost hikes on pins in recent years. I think as long as parents think they can get a souvenir for their children and kids are continually drawn in it will continue to grow. I do see a reduction in prices on the Bay for some of the older relics but I think if and when the economy comes back to full force the pins will increase again. At least I hope so. Eventually, everything taps out but I don't see that happening to pins for a long time. If they were going to fizzle I think vinyls would have knocked them out. I think vinyls will fizzle before the pins do at this point.
 
I am sure Pin trading will never EVER die off. The bubble will pop and then it will build up again. Then pop again.

Trust me I love pin trading. It gets overwhelming with the prices and the scrappers in the parks but overall the pin life is good!
 
Disney continues to reinvent itself, it's parks, its stories. And for that reason I think pins and pin trading will last. Take Maleficent for example. I foresee a HUGE jump in Maleficent pin prices once the movie comes out. Angelina Jolie is going to give you chills just as the sight of her when it comes out. Maleficent pins will ride a high along with all the Sleeping Beauty pins will see a slight bump up. Mary Poppins pins may make a blip with the anniversary and Saving Mr. Banks. Cinderella when the live action comes. People are already clamoring for Ariel pins, when the 3D release comes I think we'll see a lot of lanyards full of Ariel pins popping out of the woodwork and the renewed interest will keep them going strong.

A lucrative strategy might be to try to collect while genres are easy to get with anticipation of a rebirth with something Disney is doing. Some things I don't think will ever get revived, and if Disney forgets them they will just die off. But in pieces, like a divestiture (Song of the South or Country Bears for example.)
 

I just hope that these people who want to make a living off pins find something new to move onto and get out of the pins business. But as long as some people will continue to pay the ridiculous high prices they will hang around. I've decided that some pin traders complain about the high prices and then turn around and pay that price to get what they want. So who know what will happen or when.
 
If Disney manages the product life cycle properly, then you won't see an ebb of pin collecting as a whole. Rather, you would see ebbs in the demand of certain lines of pins. So, for example, the bubble will eventually burst on Tangled and Piece of Disney Movie History pins and so on, but not on pins as a whole. As the cycle winds down on them, it will be ramping up on the next big things.
 
Over the last 2 years that I have been actively collecting pins, I have seen the increase in prices and scarcity of certain pins. I think pin collecting will never go away, but it does seem recently with how things have increased in price so quickly that there must be some type of wall or dip for it to hit. How soon? I am not certain.

I saw this too in comics back in the 90's. The funny thing is the older comics of the 80's/early 90's are increasing in price recently due to all the movies going on. But there was a large lull from the 90's when they were making all these collectible issues that glutted the market and the bubble burst there.
 
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