Buying pin lots from eBay?

[agnes!]

Was thinking of buying a lot from a certain eBayer, but am somewhat concerned about 'scrappers'. That being said, my neighbors bought from this guy & the pins look good to me - Hidden Mickeys/Cast lanyards, LE 100s, some CM only pins. I need some mindless trading pins, ones that I won't have to think too much about when trading.

I am having a hard time resisting the price. WWYD ?

Thanks,
agnes!
PS - This seller has a positive rating.

 

[Brian_WDW74]

If the seller has a positive rating from several buyers, not just a few, and your neighbor is happy with the pins received, I'd say go for it!

 

[Donald is #1]

If the seller has a good rating and your neighbors pins look good, then I say go for it!

I have bought pin lots from 2-4 different sellers and have had good luck. I look for ones that show you a picture of the pins that you are bidding on (good pictures only, if they are blurry then I won't buy) and have excellent feedback.

 

[Love2Tvl1]

I have bought from, and totally trust Darlene and Nena at waltsbasement.com. I ordered from them prior to the Epcot pin event and was very pleased with what I was sent.
Andrea

 

[jackskellingtonsgirl]

Darlene and Nena are truly fabulous, but they have been sold out for several weeks. That pushed me to buy from a couple of eBay sellers.

One is a guy I have purchased from before, but he sells all of his pins individually. I managed to win 27 of them and I am waiting for them to arrive.

Another guy does the same thing - individual pins only BUT he will ship for FREE if you buy 25 or more in 14 days and pay in one payment. I won 40 from him and I paid for them but haven't heard anything about whether or not they have shipped. I hate that. If I have paid I like to be told when it ships.

I have a few lots that I am watching now but I am not sure if I will bid. After being burned with the scrappers I refuse to buy any sort of cast lanyard/Hidden Mickey pins at all.

 

[Love2Tvl1]

Great News!
Darlene and Nena have replenished their stock, and should be ready to resume taking orders by probably next week! Please check with them!

 

[bord1niowa]

I am trying to find waltsbasement.com and I can't come up with it? Is that their ebay name? I didn't find that either.

 

[jackskellingtonsgirl]

Hmm. When I typed it in it worked OK.

You can send an e-mail to collectiblesnd@yahoo.com and they can help you with your order.

They also have a page on GeoCities - Pin Station, maybe? But you won't get free shipping if you go through there.

 

[bord1niowa]

It worked today....go figure. We are fairly new to the pin trading thing so I don't know how big some of the pins are. We did very well with a Cinderella pin with the Dangling shoe on a pillow about 3 1/2 inches long. Bought a bunch more for next year's trading. Everybody seemed to want them.

 

[Hedy]

Great News!
Darlene and Nena have replenished their stock, and should be ready to resume taking orders by probably next week! Please check with them!

I got an e-mail from Darlene offering pins today-I'd contacted her about three weeks ago.

 

[TeenaS]

I've been purchasing on ebay from mubunny ... the pins are always exactly as described. The seller has some good ones up right now. I bought a bunch last month from him and he combined shipping (which made them very affordable) and all the pins were cast lanyard hidden mickey pins and in top condition.

 

[agnes!]

Well, I shouldn't have bought from the seller I did buy from as I think many/most look suspiciously a little "off"...oh well. Live and learn.

agnes!

 

[jackskellingtonsgirl]

Well, I shouldn't have bought from the seller I did buy from as I think many/most look suspiciously a little "off"...oh well. Live and learn.

agnes!

Ouch! Sorry about your bad experience!

The thing to remember about feedback is that the majority of eBay buyers wouldn't know a scrapper if it bit them in the butt. Dozens of people will leave feedback saying the pins are perfect because they don't know any better. I am guilty of that, too, because I didn't know the difference when I bought my fakes. Since you can't edit feedback then you are stuck, evenif you figure out later that the pins are fakes.

 

[agnes!]

This seller has to have full knowledge of what he is doing. He sold virtually the same pins to my neighbors. What gets me is that Disney corporate could certainly stop all the trafficking in off-brand renditions of their copyrighted images. They could shut down all these scrappers IF THEY WANTED TO.

The question for me is...Why don't they? The Disney lawyers are certainly zealous to protect their corporate coffers from day cares that use Mickey Mouse as a decoration, etc. I think that this trafficking hurts the integrity of the pin trading process, it's far FAR worse than the unauthorized images of Mickey Mouse and Marilyn Monroe and Coke all on the same pin. These pins absolutely HAVE to use the same molds and the same manufacturing plants that the genuine pins are made in. The pins are *almost* identical, the main differences being that the colors are...well...a little off (too garish or just wrong) and that the accustomed Disney quality and finishing touches are missing - edges are rougher, metals are the wrong color, image details aren't crisp, metal punchouts are left in. I've even seen an unauthorized scrapper of an LE 250 pin!!! There is no way that there could be that much of a variation in colors/finishes when the production run is only 250.

I probably won't leave any feedback at all.

agnes!

 

[jackskellingtonsgirl]

This seller has to have full knowledge of what he is doing. He sold virtually the same pins to my neighbors. What gets me is that Disney corporate could certainly stop all the trafficking in off-brand renditions of their copyrighted images. They could shut down all these scrappers IF THEY WANTED TO.

The question for me is...Why don't they? The Disney lawyers are certainly zealous to protect their corporate coffers from day cares that use Mickey Mouse as a decoration, etc. I think that this trafficking hurts the integrity of the pin trading process, it's far FAR worse than the unauthorized images of Mickey Mouse and Marilyn Monroe and Coke all on the same pin. These pins absolutely HAVE to use the same molds and the same manufacturing plants that the genuine pins are made in. The pins are *almost* identical, the main differences being that the colors are...well...a little off (too garish or just wrong) and that the accustomed Disney quality and finishing touches are missing - edges are rougher, metals are the wrong color, image details aren't crisp, metal punchouts are left in. I've even seen an unauthorized scrapper of an LE 250 pin!!! There is no way that there could be that much of a variation in colors/finishes when the production run is only 250.

I probably won't leave any feedback at all.

agnes!

Oh, the seller ABSOLUTELY knows what he is selling! You can report him to eBay for selling counterfeit merchandise, but unless LOTS of people report him he won't be banned from selling. And since many people don't know enough about pins to spot the fakes then he will continue to accumulate positive feedback.

I showed some of our scrappers to a manager at Epcot and he immediately denied that they were fakes - he said they were FINE, the screwy backstamp was just an error in the printing run. Bonehead.

From what I have heard the counterfeit DVD business is where Disney is losing lots of revenue, so that's where they are focusing their legal action. They don't care so much about counterfeit Hidden Mickey pins because they don't sell them.

 

[agnes!]

If Disney corporate doesn't step up to the plate on this issue, they will kill pin trading the same way they did when they mis-managed Disney "beanies". Disney corporate will be responsible for allowing the lethal poisoning of the entire pin trading experience.
True, this might be a slow-moving poison, but if they don't fix this mess there won't be an effective antidote.

Hidden Mickey/Cast Lanyard pins have become the engine that drives pin-trading for most Guests. Mess with the engine and the whole machine will irretrievably break down.

agnes!

 

[t-beri]

I showed some of our scrappers to a manager at Epcot and he immediately denied that they were fakes - he said they were FINE, the screwy backstamp was just an error in the printing run. Bonehead.

While I am mostly of the mind that we, as traders, have to be the ones to keep the integrity in trading by NOT trading scrappers or otherwise untradeable pins. At the point where a WDW manager has blown you off and said they were legal I'm afraid I'd have traded them off w/ cast members.

Pin traders made this what it is, not WDW. By that I mean that trading started way before WDW officially endorsed pin trading. Now that they have commercialized it it will be up to us to keep trading ethical. I would venture to guess that before pins became so sought after there were little to no unauthorized WDW pins. But now everyone wants them cheaper than they can get them at WDW, I'm no exception, so the door was opened for all kinds of wrong doers.

Buying WDW pins online has always been a bit of an ethical challenge for me. I see sharks out there getting ppl to trade 3 and 4 pins for one pin b/c they say it's "special" and a newbie wouldn't know any different and would think that someone w/ 5 books of pins is CLEARLY an expert- so they do it (again, I'm no exception here either, I've been taken too) and wonder if those sharks are who we're all paying on e-bay. Did I just give money to a man who conned a newbie to get a couple of pins to sell?? I like to believe they're cast members (struggling college students- working their way through school) who attend CM parties where they can buy grab bags for 5 bucks a piece and trying to make a buck online. Either way, I am just as guilty of looking for a deal online and that's where those thieves have the power.
Should WDW do something about it? Maybe. But they're not. So I don't see any other way than for us as traders to buy and trade as ethically as possible.

That's just my opinion
...t.

 

[jackskellingtonsgirl]

I think some of the brand new, on-the-card rack pins on eBay are probably from sharks. Which to me is almost the lesser of the evils when I consider that others are probably stolen.

DH was totally ready to trade off the scrappers after our Epcot encounter, but the thing is, WE don't want to get a scrapper from a CM and nobody else does, either.

What we have is a multi-pronged problem, though. We have newbies who are legitimately clueless. They buy 200 scrappers and trade every last one of them in the parks. Then we are all at risk of trading for them.
We have jerks who buy the same 200 scrappers and trade them on purpose. No matter how conscientious we are as "serious" (and ethical) pin people those 2 groups are going to continue to overwhelm the hobby. We have the sellers buying pins by the THOUSANDS from China and auctioning them several hundred per day, and they don't care if it's wrong. Disney isn't trying to stop them, so there isn't any incentive for them to stop.

It makes my head hurt if I think about it too long.

 

[t-beri]

I agree, the problem is certainly multi faceted. And I never let WDW off the hook. I will commend you for NOT trading off the scrappers. I always think about a mom (not unlike myself) struggling to pay for a great WDW vacation for her kids (we save all year for this!!) and paying $8 for a pin that DD is going to trade for a 5 cent scrapper cause it was the first Cinderella pin she saw. So yeah, totally agree on the NOT trading crappy pins... you got that, right?? I hate forum posts, sometimes my meaning gets lost in them. I am all for ethical and legal pin trading. I just would have probably been so pissed off that he didn't know the difference or give a hoot that I would have wanted to unload them on the first CM I saw- I'm a brat that way. Especially b/c money is always tight for us and that would have meant taking traders away from the kids. So it might have been a case where my conscience was overridden. Luckily I have never had the problem (keep your fingers crossed, I've got a lot of 30 pins on the way, though the seller seems on the up and up.)

...t.

 

[jackskellingtonsgirl]

We got really into eBay after our February trip. We traded all the pins we had on hand (from the Disney Store) and we decided to buy more traders as well as pick up some pins to complete our sets. S-T-U-P-I-D!

I bought a 40 pin lot of cast lanyards and most of them were fakes. (The backstamps weren't what they should have been, funny coloring, you know the drill.) Right on the heels of that one was a 20 pin lot from a seller with over 10,000 positive feedbacks and most of those were fakes, too. At the time I wasn't familiar with PinPics and didn't realize until later that we had a bunch of scrappers/counterfeits.

I do still buy from eBay, but I don't buy cast lanyard or Hidden Mickey pins. I don't buy if they don't accept returns. I don't buy if every auction they have is the same pins over and over (but that tends to be the cast lanyards more than the rack pins). I love how the same people have multiple accounts open to sell all the same pins, too.

I have 2 lots on the way, but they are from a seller we have bought from before and they are just rack pins and pins out of starter sets. Hopefully those will be OK!