How do you organize your pin bag?

[eeyorefanatic]

I know this is probably a very subjective thing but I was just curious how everyone organized their pins. Do you group them by chrachter? By value? Traders vs non trader?

My pin bag should arrive today and I can not wait to start loading it up

 

[Obi-Wan Pinobi]

Organize??? What's that???

We definitely keep our traders separate from our keepers. One of these days we may try to organize our traders books a little better than they are, but we try to keep traders of the same level -- LE size, CM, etc. -- together.

Different people do what works best for them. Think about how you want to organize everything and experiment a bit.

 

[ivanova]

Traders and keepers are in different bags.

In the keepers bag it's organized by family member (DH has pages, DD has pages, I gave up my pages for my own bag). We also have "family" pages (the community owned pins) and that's where we have the lanyard only series of pins and other family owned pins.

DH organizes his pins (99% villains) by the sets that they are in. DD organizes willy-nilly.
I have mine separated first by theme (i.e. patriotic), then by sets or characters.

The traders bag is organized with the first pages being those that DD can trade (without me having heart failure). Then the following pages are LEs, lanyard only, or HTF pins. DD can occasionally trade off these pages, as long as the trade is supervised by one of us.

 

[Duckfan]

I have to laugh because in my pin bag there is, get this, one page devoted to traders and it is only partially full. I have them on a separate page, usually on the first page. I find I do a few groupings of sets or like pins (ie my romantic pins) but I also group by, oh look this fits in this empty space. I love to rearrange them from time to time and then it gets more grouped. Hope you have fun with your pin bag. I bought mine on sale but I really love it now.

 

[Dagny]

My daughter and I keep our keepers and traders in seperate bags too In our "keepers" bag, we have them seperated by Limited Editions - then grouped by character or style (holidays, events, etc), Cast Member Lanyard Pins, Rack Pins from WDW -grouped then by character, theme park or "land" i.e. Fantasyland, Rack Pins from TDS, and then my CM Only Pins (I used to be a CM).

I just bought my DD the big trading pin bag from WDW during our trip in May and when we pulled out all of our keepers from year's past realized we need yet another bag, LOL

 

[AZ JazzyJ]

I usually face the pointy things out and the colored side in. Then I arrange the pages so that all the rubber pin backs are together and all the metal backs are together. Then I have a page of pins that I have stepped on. You can usually tell those because the pointy thing is bent or it has pieces of band-aid still stuck to it. I was going to create a page of pins that I lost but right now that page is blank because I have misplaced the pins I was going to put on there.

Jeff

 

[ivanova]

ROTFLOL!! That's great Jeff!!

 

[3kids4me]

Jeff,

Don't forget the page of pins that you don't have yet!!

 

[daber]

I know this sounds silly, but I keep my traders in pinpic number order. (there is some variation since I'll keep all of one set together where the first pin is in the pinpic number sequence)
This makes it easier to update pinpics on what pins have been traded. I also keep a pinpics printout of my traders and I put the LE size and other relevant info for easy reference when trading.

 

[ivanova]

Now that's a sign of a serious trader!!

 

[mouseman68]

I gave up on the organize things. I am now re-looking at what I have and trying to formulate some kind of order. My traders I try to organize but they seem to get messy after every Tuesday of trading.

 

[Buzz2001]

I use Microsoft Access to run a database program that lets me cross reference my traders and duplicates and sorts them by value and edition size. This allows me to print reports and labels that I attach to each pin so potential traders know what the edition size is for each pin.

All pins are neatly place 1.5 inches apart in the book in rows of 6 across and 4 down. No Mickey head backs are used, they take up too much space.

Every 3 days I remove each and every pin for inspection and polishing and reorder as needed.


Just kidding, jsut do whatever works for you.

 

[Engr-Chas]

Traders and Keepers are in seperate bags/places/bulletin boards.

After many, many years of collecting and trading, I have come up with the following system.

The first thing that I do when I get a new bag is to buy cork sheets (1/4" thick). I cut the sheets to fit in each page (where the backs are usually attached). Now the "bag" has been changed to a "book".

This does a few things, it makes the pages "stiff" so that the pages are easier to turn and the pins don't bang into each other, it also eliminates the need to attach the backs while the pins are in the book making it easy to organize and reorganize the pins.

The book is smoother and flatter and I setup my book so that it can be viewed like a book, pages turned right to left NOT bottom to top.

As for organizing the trader pins themselves, each book has both rack and LE's. One book is easy trades with the other being harder trades (I only take one of each to each meet/event, I have MANY books).

I do like Daber's idea of pinpics numbered order though!

The books or boards with keepers are organized by groups or events.

Hope this makes sense.

Engr-Chas
Lord of the Pin Book

 

[jojo_ct]

daber! I can't believe anyone is as AR as I am. Yes, I too keep my traders in PinPics Number order. I find it makes it much easier to keep my list up to date. After every meet I can come home and uncheck the pins I traded.

As far as my keepers go, I have my theme books. One bag is for Holidays and Special Events. One bag is for International. One bag is for Patriotic. One bag is for WDW park pins (this is getting full so I may be getting another bag for park pins and then they will be separated into Park pins vs Resort pins.) Within the park pins, each park has it's own pages and then within the park I try to group the pins according to location, i.e. all Tomorrowland pins are together, all Fantasyland pins are together, etc.

Then, the bags go into suitcases and I try to remember which bag is in which suitcase. It never fails, the one I'm looking for is in the last suitcase I open.

Aren't you sorry you asked?

Cynthia

BTW, Mario's book is exactly as he described it.

 

[goofyforwdw]

All I can say is WOW you people are too funny LOL but I do like your idea's please come orginize my books