Hi and welcome to the wacky world of pin trading.
Beware.....it is EXTREMELY addictive. It only takes one to start.
Buy what you like and try early on to pick a theme....(favoritie movie, character, ride, etc.) and then concentrate on those pins.
But if you only buy pins you want to keep, you don't have any to trade. So buy two of those pins....one to keep and one to trade. It helps to know what other people collect, so the most favorites are Pooh and friends, Tinkerbell, Mickey, Haunted Mansion, and Pirates, but that's just MHO. There is pin trading every Thurs night at the All Star Sports and every friday night at the Contemporary. There's also pin trading every night at DTD, but be careful down there.
As for where to pick up info and tips, this is a great board with a great bunch of people, but a few of us, including myself, have a few quirks.
Dispins will tell you what pins are about to be released.
Pinpics contains a database of all the pins we know about and you can do a search by a key word of your choosing. Also there is a Trade Assistant for those of us geographically challenged and we trade over the Internet. Hope this helps!
