Pin Trading Etiquette

[MonorailLover]

I purchase pins on ebay, which I make sure are real, and trade them for nice ones from CM's. I've gotten some very valuable pins from them, but most of the time, they end up being from the pin sets being currently sold at the store they're working at. Most of the time the nice ones are from kids wanting a nice one from the CM, and trading them their limited edition Nautilus pin.....

 

[Matt_Black]

I fdound this hilarious. You do realize it is not a crime to purchase an item that is identified as "authentic"?

If you bought something someone identified as oregano and it later turned out to be marijuana, would you still get busted for possession? YES.

 

[MonorailLover]

If you bought something someone identified as oregano and it later turned out to be marijuana, would you still get busted for possession? YES.

I think its too late in the pin trading business for CM's to say to a little kid "I'm sorry, but your pin is fake, and I won't accept it." Especially at Disney! I could expect that at Universal (), but not at Disney. For fake pins to become illegal, in a sense, they would have to quietly crack down on the makers, to stop production, and then Sales would stop, but cracking down on the possessors isn't fair.

Sounds kind of similar to your analogy!

 

[MonorailLover]

Sorry for a double post, but CM's should also accept them, and destroy them behind the scenes..... But 99% can't, and frankly shouldn't need to know the difference.

 

[asianway]

Sorry for a double post, but CM's should also accept them, and destroy them behind the scenes..... But 99% can't, and frankly shouldn't need to know the difference.

Rumor had it at one point the fakes were being resold at property control thus completing the circle

 

[tsp]

We just got back from a trip a few days ago and while waiting for an embroidery to be completed we were chatting with a few CM's about pin trading one suggested to get them on Ebay. The second CM trading with my son said basically the same thing.."oh yeah she's right , that is the best place to get them. You can get them super cheap" close to exact words spoken.

This would lead me to believe Disney is not providing enough information to the CM's about real/fake pins.

Our local disney store had a huge amount of pins on clearance for 1.00 a piece. Some of the pins were actually 2 on one card (Phineas and Ferb). I bought all they had left. (About 50) We took these to trade this trip and I can tell you that all of the ones my Son traded for seemed to be fakes from looking on the sites that show how to find fakes.

Not that he cared , he had a blast either way and got the pins he wanted. So we didn't mind. But if you pay normal price for pins for your child to trade at the parks you may not be happy about ending up with sappers / fakes. Unless you spend a large amount of time inspecting each pin before you let your child take it you are most likely going to end up with fakes. I would venture to say most parents would not want to inspect each pin and then say no Son/Daughter you can not trade for that pin you want on the cm lanyard it may be fake!

 

[thomas998]

That's not what he said... he said 'cheapest he found' - not everything priced 1.99. You've just taken two things and aligned them unnaturally to try to defend yourself.

I don't think you actually read what I said... I said,

"But by your own definition of 80% being too good to be true, you are breaking your own rule when you buy pins at 1.99 at CW as some pins will retail for 20 or more, so a 1.99 pin could very well be below your 80% rule."

Notice the word "could", I didn't say every one they saw was or even that any were, I said COULD. The reality is some things sold at CW are 80% off from the original price, but according to the other poster anything that is 80% off is likely too good to be true.

 

[MonorailLover]

We just got back from a trip a few days ago and while waiting for an embroidery to be completed we were chatting with a few CM's about pin trading one suggested to get them on Ebay. The second CM trading with my son said basically the same thing.."oh yeah she's right , that is the best place to get them. You can get them super cheap" close to exact words spoken.

This would lead me to believe Disney is not providing enough information to the CM's about real/fake pins.

Our local disney store had a huge amount of pins on clearance for 1.00 a piece. Some of the pins were actually 2 on one card (Phineas and Ferb). I bought all they had left. (About 50) We took these to trade this trip and I can tell you that all of the ones my Son traded for seemed to be fakes from looking on the sites that show how to find fakes.

Not that he cared , he had a blast either way and got the pins he wanted. So we didn't mind. But if you pay normal price for pins for your child to trade at the parks you may not be happy about ending up with sappers / fakes. Unless you spend a large amount of time inspecting each pin before you let your child take it you are most likely going to end up with fakes. I would venture to say most parents would not want to inspect each pin and then say no Son/Daughter you can not trade for that pin you want on the cm lanyard it may be fake!

Yeah, as I said, it doesn't seem that the CM's have enough information for them to be able to seek out fakes. ALSO, I think another problem is that they do nothing to them when they receive them, they just give them back to us or our kids, thus completing the vicious cycle of fake pin trading.

 

[thomas998]

We just got back from a trip a few days ago and while waiting for an embroidery to be completed we were chatting with a few CM's about pin trading one suggested to get them on Ebay. The second CM trading with my son said basically the same thing.."oh yeah she's right , that is the best place to get them. You can get them super cheap" close to exact words spoken.

This would lead me to believe Disney is not providing enough information to the CM's about real/fake pins.

Our local disney store had a huge amount of pins on clearance for 1.00 a piece. Some of the pins were actually 2 on one card (Phineas and Ferb). I bought all they had left. (About 50) We took these to trade this trip and I can tell you that all of the ones my Son traded for seemed to be fakes from looking on the sites that show how to find fakes.

Not that he cared , he had a blast either way and got the pins he wanted. So we didn't mind. But if you pay normal price for pins for your child to trade at the parks you may not be happy about ending up with sappers / fakes. Unless you spend a large amount of time inspecting each pin before you let your child take it you are most likely going to end up with fakes. I would venture to say most parents would not want to inspect each pin and then say no Son/Daughter you can not trade for that pin you want on the cm lanyard it may be fake!

The reality is you will find a lot of pins that don't live up to the rules that the earlier poster's link had... that doesn't mean that they are all fakes, they may just be older pins.

In the end it really shouldn't matter if you are trading and getting fakes, real one or some made from solid gold. As long as your kid is happy with what they get out of the trade who cares? It isn't like you are doing this to make money is it? I mean do most of the parents of kids that trade pins look at them each night and determine if little Billy or Betty made good trades or bad trades? If the kid is happy why can't the parents let them be happy without trying to say, "Oh, you got a bad pin here. I don't think its real." I can see it now the kid that is happy as a clam about some pin he/she thinks looks cool and suddenly mom or dad stomps on joy by declaring its a fake.

If that's the case you have kind of taken the enjoyment out of it to the point that maybe you shouldn't be letting your kids trade pins in the first place.

 

[flynnibus]

I don't think you actually read what I said... I said,

No, I did.. you just used a stupid corner case to try to invalidate the otherwise accurate statement. It's a scenario that is artificial and not representative of the whole.. hence a useless stretch.

 

[thomas998]

No, I did.. you just used a stupid corner case to try to invalidate the otherwise accurate statement. It's a scenario that is artificial and not representative of the whole.. hence a useless stretch.

As I noted you did not take the full measure of what I said, you have simply cherry picked parts to make your argument. You can cherry pick to make any point you wish, but it doesn't make anything valid.

 

[flynnibus]

As I noted you did not take the full measure of what I said, you have simply cherry picked parts to make your argument. You can cherry pick to make any point you wish, but it doesn't make anything valid.

No I didn't cherry pick. I addressed the fundamental point the rest derived from. I don't need to repeat myself debunking things line by line when you cut things off at the foundation. But since logical progression needs to be called out I guess... let's do it the long way.

The $2 pin cited was not a $20 pin... so trying to compare the $20 price to determine the actual discount seen of the pin selling at $2 is completely irrelevant. Just because I see pinA being sold at $2 does not mean I will see the $20 pinB being sold at $2 as well (your logical fallacy). So the discount of 2/20 has no bearing on anything. The $20 price means absolutely nothing at all.. unless you are citing what the asking price of the $20 pin was... which.. was not even part of the discussion. So stop trying to bring in OTHER prices of unrelated products are to compute the discount of other.

Your point is like trying to counter what the normal discount when buying a honda car is... by comparing someone's buying price of a honda... with the retail price of a Toyota Truck. They are both cars, they both are discounted... but you don't compute the discount of the honda by comparing it to the list price of the Toyota.

Happy now??

 

[BigRedDad]

If you bought something someone identified as oregano and it later turned out to be marijuana, would you still get busted for possession? YES.

Yes, if I was buying a $25 bag of oregano that I could get at the grocery store for $2, I would be skeptical. Buying a $0.10 pin for $0.25 leaves me to feel a little more safe and on the losing side of almost all trades. If WDW police want to get on me, then I will bring my daughter's pins that she traded CMs for. For each one that is not real, a WDW exec faces the same charges as me for each one. Like that is going to happen.

I am more than willing to have someone at WDW inspect my daughter's pins. Identify which are real and which are fake. We will give them the so-called fake ones to destroy and we will trade the real ones. Just tell me where this kiosk is and I will settle it once and for all. I also want a Certificate of Authenticity for each pin CMs have that they trade. This is my guarantee that WDW is only trading real pins.

 

[draybook]

If you bought something someone identified as oregano and it later turned out to be marijuana, would you still get busted for possession? YES.

You should really read up on the counterfeit laws then. Most lawyers will even tell you that it's hard/unlikely to get prosecuted for items that you were led to believe were authentic, especially if it's not for profit. And especially when it's marked as authentic from a legitimate auction website. They're more likely to go after the distributor/manufacturer if possible.

And comparing Disney pins to drugs. Just wow, I gotta get out of this thread.

 

[seahawk7]

My kids couldn't care less if the pins are "real" or not. It's the memories they have of trading with the CM's and sometimes other guests that they value.

I agree. I know I'm going to get some heat for saying this but I just had no idea how important pin trying was to grown ups. My kids did pin trading when they were younger but lost interest. I think the pins are expensive so I can understand how some parents looked for other ways to get more pins for their kids. I honestly think @draybook has shown himself not to a dishonest kind of guy, therefore he was trying to just get his kids more pins to create more magic when they were in the parks. As he stated before, the pins are now is his house and not on a lanyard just waiting for some unsuspecting CM to be duped.

 

[seahawk7]

Well, as long as I've been cleared of being the next Dahmer, then I feel pretty good about the situation.

Yeah crisis averted.

 

[NormC]

A lot of the "fakes" cannot be identified by anyone as they are just over runs from same manufacturer, same molds, same paint, same quality. For all intents and purposes they are real. I have received an obvious bad pin where the colors were wrong. Cinderellas hair for example on a set my daughter was trying to get of rear view mirrors. We later got one with the right color and tossed the bad one. It is possible the correctly colored one could be deemed as fake by so called experts but my daughter was happy it looked right. The people in Epcot have books and boards and I would bet some of theirs could be "fake" but Disney allows them to sit there and trade without oversight. I found one of those traders to be extremely rude so I told my daughters we will look elsewhere.

 

[Courtney6682]

You should really read up on the counterfeit laws then. .

Yeah , I've been in banking for almost 10 yrs and see counterfeit bills all the time...there is no proof as to where they came from...so even the person trying to deposit said bill just walks out of the bank ...all we do is take the bill and mail it to the secret service...that's it...

 

[flynnibus]

Yeah , I've been in banking for almost 10 yrs and see counterfeit bills all the time...there is no proof as to where they came from...so even the person trying to deposit said bill just walks out of the bank ...all we do is take the bill and mail it to the secret service...that's it...

The difference is you as the bank are not the enforcement - there is no role for you to try to police it. You are doing as you are supposed to, which is to report the incident to the authority that is tasked to enforce the law. They on their own decide what to pursue. Because the volume is so great, they don't chase each bill.. but rather try to ID the trends and bigger fish.

Also different here is we're talking about people inadvertently passing on counterfeits vs people willfully doing it because they are happy to turn a blind eye to the obvious because its self-serving to do so.

If someone were to offer to give you $1000 for $100... and say 'don't worry, its all legit.." - do you really tell yourself "I had no idea this was fake, the guy told me it was legit...".

Or let's say they are selling gift cards online... $100 target gift card for $5. Do you go 'oh yeah, totally legit.. its on ebay and the description says its legit!"

 

[Bairstow]

If you bought something someone identified as oregano and it later turned out to be marijuana, would you still get busted for possession? YES.

Only in Florida, though.

http://ivn.us/2012/07/18/florida-su...stitutionality-of-controversial-drug-statute/

But beyond that, you're mixing up the applicable laws.