I was gifted my first pin by a friend about 5 years ago. I now have over 500 pins. No clue how or when, but there they are.I am glad to see this thread! I may try my hand at trading a few pins when we go and I like the tips!
If you are getting them that cheap, they are *probably* not real unless you are buying 200-300 at a time.
We're kicking ourselves for not getting into pin trading earlier!!! We went on a Dream cruise this year, and now we're so sad that we didn't participate in the officer trading. We came back from Aulani and at Aulani finally thought, how stupid are we not to buy pins for each of the destinations!
So we've started with some Aulani pins, Dream cruise pins and we visited the pin store in NOS last week and found those beautiful Tinkerbell Cameo birthday pins. I also bought some of those mystery pins along w/our Cameo pins to trade...which is why I posted this thread.
We haven't even traded yet and I'm addicted already.
Do you have any tips on how to avoid accidentally trading for those scrapper or fake pins? I looked on dizpins.com already, and honestly, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference while I'm standing there ...Are scrapper pins pretty obvious?
I was gifted my first pin by a friend about 5 years ago. I now have over 500 pins. No clue how or when, but there they are.
If you are getting them that cheap, they are *probably* not real unless you are buying 200-300 at a time.
- Dreams
Some are very obvious, others not so much. You really just have to look them over and then decide whether or not to worry about it. We have a lot of scrappers in our collections, depending on the pin we just don't worry about it.
Please do NOT follow this advice, this is bad advice as these pins are almost 100% sure to be scrappers.
We don't trade much at night either, unless it's a pin we just have to have. We actually have small flashlights we carry on our lanyards so we can see the pins in better lighting at night. I've been burned soooooooo many times, not so much by CM's but by regular people just trading. It's quite frustrating to know that the pin you thought was in good condition is actually quite beat up.
Even buying 200-300 at a time is not a guarantee of good pins, in fact, quite the opposite IME. Before I knew about scrappers I would buy lots like that, huge quantities for trading...and then someone told me about scrappers and I realized the pins I'd been trading (and getting) were probably all fake. So I made a concerted effort to educate myself and honestly, any seller with that many pins is a HUGE red flag for me.
Anyone interested in buying pins for better prices please follow the link in my signature. It's quite helpful, and yes, quite large but it's a good place to start.
