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What pins to trade and not to trade at all!
- Thread starter Bacon
- Start date
Andrew_Animatronic
Active Member
A funny story/something that could help. They hand out small, American flag pins that count as official pins while you wait outside MK during Fourth of July. You can grab a bunch of them, and they can be traded as actual pins to cast members. 
ThanksA funny story/something that could help. They hand out small, American flag pins that count as official pins while you wait outside MK during Fourth of July. You can grab a bunch of them, and they can be traded as actual pins to cast members.
NormC
Well-Known Member
You can trade them all. It is your choice. I personally have favorites that I would not trade and have filler material that I do trade. What I consider filler this year may have been a theme that I wanted to collect three years ago and got bored. My keepers may be your traders. That is how it works.
E-ticket Princess
Member
Check out Pinpics.com. It is a complete and comprehensive on line catalog of everything released over the last 15 years or so. I do a search on my new aquisitions each night to check their value. Mostly it is keeping what you love and trading what you don't though.
BigRedDad
Well-Known Member
My take on pin trading is that CMs have all of the same pins that are on eBay for $0.50 each. Pin trading is not the same as it was 5 years ago. After spending $100s on the starter/booster packs to trade for $0.50 pins, I stopped buying packs. If we are getting $0.50 pins, we are trading $0.50 pins. In the end, even the $15 pins only cost Disney about $0.20. They have no reason to enforce or police the issue.
If you want to trade good pins for good pins, you need to do it with the professional traders.
If you want to trade good pins for good pins, you need to do it with the professional traders.
Jedi Stitch
Well-Known Member
My daughter thought she was supposed to trade with each and every CM she ran into. We were kinda upset with her at a point that she had traded away all the starter booster pins we got her, for basically crap. I asked her what she really liked, and gave her an example that mom was always on the look out for Stitch. We bought her some Minnie pins, and some frozen and she started to understand, to trade the frozen for Minnie themed ones she wanted. I had my Pirate and Star Wars on, when we got stopped at DHS. The guy really tried to trade for my coveted Framed "we wants the redhead", the woman traded a minnie for a minnie with my Daughter, but I fear she got a raw deal. I think she traded a rare for 2016, for a common.
RustySpork
Oscar Mayer Memer
Does this jump to $12 for 2017?
You're not kidding, the CM pins are all starter pack pins that you can get for almost nothing. Something to be cautious of that I learned about while talking to a cast member who managed one of the pin shops, there (used to be and maybe still is) a huge problem with knock off pins being traded down at WDW. They phony pin peddlers were brazen enough to set up shop right out side of the pin store at Disney Springs, and were there almost daily from what we were told until security did something about it. I don't know what that something is, I assume they were trespassed.. Disney's made a bunch of changes to their pins over the years to try and prevent counterfeiting. Who would have thought that counterfeit Disney pins is a thing.
We only trade with cast if we trade at all anymore.
I doubt they plant collector pins with any CMs anymore. We just got back from a trip where one daughter traded out over 150 pins with CMs during the trip. The vast majority of pins she got were fakes, the only truly good one she got was from a CM that mentioned to her when she traded that he was surprised the previous person traded it to him... So it wasn't one that the CM pulled before going on duty it was one some kid traded, which was a bit sad because I would guess that maybe 85% of the pins she traded for were fakes. If I were someone that had paid full price for the pins I would have been livid... but we learned along time ago that if you trade pins with cast members you need to buy a bunch from ebay because by and large those are the only types you will see on the CM lanyards.
Not going to argue about collector pins with CM's I have CM friends that trade all the time. The parks have a program with rules in place for CM's that wish to trade (its optional). The fact that you got "fakes" from CM's and are willing to go on e-bay to potentially buy more fakes to trade answers how fakes get onto a CM's lanyard. The pins on a CM's lanyard as well as the lanyard belong to the parks. The CM's go periodically to get "freshened up" . They do not check to insure if a pin is genuine that they just received through a trade. That gets sorted out later. And they don't get freshened up everyday it's dependent on when they can get back over there.
Sorry but I don't believe for one minute they ever freshen those lanyards. We have hit parks at rope drop and the typical lanyards we saw were still only filled with the ebay fakes when it should have been the best time to see some fresh lanyards... My favorite was the lanyard that had about a dozen pins but only 4 different pins.
It was the reason I started buying my kids bags of the cheap ebay pins a couple of years ago, I got tired of them trading a pin that cost 9 or 10 dollars for one that was 50 cents on ebay. At this point I've told my kids that they should assume any pin from a CM is going to be fake unless they simply get lucky which is pretty much the way it has become. Even more annoying is the pin house at Disney Springs where you would expect the CMs to be able to tell the difference between a real pin and a fake will pull out their huge pin board and it will also have a majority of fake pins on it... Which brings up an interesting question does a fake pin stop being a fake pin when you trade a CM for it?
Frankly if you want to find real pins being traded you have to go to Epcot on a weekend and find some of the pin traders that show up there... Only when you do that there are some that just have loads of ebay fakes that will only trade for real pins preying on little kids that have no clue.
It would be nice if Disney would put some rules in place that kept the fakes out of the trading, but they seem unwilling to do anything to stop it so at the end of the day you have to accept that Disney doesn't seem to see it as a problem, which isn't a surprise since Disney only gets their money when a pin is sold and gets nothing when one is traded.
As I mentioned earlier it's depending on when the CM can get over to freshen up it could be days. And yes you might see a lanyard with 5 or 6 of the same pin, they haven't been back to freshen. Sorry if you feel like you were cheated but again those pins on the CM are park property the CM will trade with anyone without checking. They do it for the interaction if people are slipping them fakes then trader beware and examine a pin before you agree to trade.
Miceberg
Well-Known Member
I don't know a lot, but this is something I DO know about. The trading (non-brazen) began at the invitation of Disney and went on for years - later on, the traders in Downtown Disney were "encouraged to trade elsewhere" not because of fakes or counterfeits - it was because of complaints received by people who felt they were taken advantage of. No one was trespassed. Disney simply removed the trading tables and
RustySpork
Oscar Mayer Memer
This is very interesting, thank you for the info!
Figment_Of_Imagination
Member
Here! Here! If its Figment I'm keeping it. Even if I already have 3 of them.