Pin Newbie Question

[jimscricket]

I always knew pin trading/collecting was a thing but never really got into it but after my last Disney World visit I actually decided to pick up a few pins of some of my favorite characters and to my surprise they were a bit more expensive than I assumed they were, because of this I bought less pins than I was originally planing to... a week later I decided to buy a few off ebay where they were selling the same exact pins that I saw at the parks were selling for less than half the price!
So my question is whats the catch? I bought a few individual pins online that I compared with the ones I bought at the park and I'm pretty much sure they're legitimate but how are people getting ahold of so many pins to then resell for half the original price?!

 

[figment_jii]

There are any number of ways...

Some pins might be available at the Disney Outlet shops at a discount. Add in any discounts (e.g., AP, Cast Member, etc.) and that can markedly drop the price.

Some pins might also be available at the CM store at a discount.

Sellers might also be purchasing factory over-runs, which is form of a scrapper. It means Disney contracted the factory to make 1 million pins, but the factory actually made 1.1 million and sold the extra 0.1 million on the second hand market. Those will look identical to the "legit" pin you buy in Disney, so they're practically impossible to tell.

 

[figment_jii]

im guessing a lot of people only want LEs so the commons are cheap

None of the individual pins sold int he parks are really "cheap." I think the lowest price is $7. The OP was asking about sellers on eBay (and other venues) that can sell pins (using Buy It Now and features like that) for well below retail.