Pin Trading

[lynzi2004]

Coming to Disneyland for New Years. On our last WDW trip, my son got into pin trading. We bought I think 3 of the mystery packs in the in park stores (they had like 5 pins for $35.) He happily traded around on the boards. Once home, I got to looking into it more and found out that people trade knock offs, etc at WDW and it’s not well monitored. He’s 12 and was thrilled with the pins he traded for, I don’t personally care if it was a “good/fair” trade or not. I spent $100 on pins and he spent 4 days happily skipping around the parks…best money I’ve spent to be honest! Lol each evening he was excited to pull them out and look everything over. Now, fast forward to this New Years trip. Are they much more strict about pin trading here? If he ended up with knockoffs, will they refuse a trade? Should I just buy more pins at DL to trade and save his others for trading back at WDW? Thanks in advance!

 

[SOCALMouseMommy]

The pin boards here are also filled with fakes and scrappers. It’s safer to directly trade with cast members (they wear their pins for trade). There are a few boards that are more closely monitored. For instance there is a blind box trading board in Tomorrowland where you can only trade new pins of one of the sets on display. The cast members managing the pin boards are usually pretty knowledgeable so you can strike up a conversation with them about it all.

 

[lynzi2004]

Ok thank you!

 

[Genie+]

My theory is Disney Parks doesn’t decline pins for 2 reasons:

- It would put CMs in a very tough position to monitor because unless they were all scrutinizing the pins to the same level, a guest could trade for a pin in one place then a CM elsewhere decline it. Not a good look for Disney, and…

- They don’t need to. Pin trading the lower tier pins increases interest and results in guests buying more of the collector type pins.

Trading is an opt-in type situation which I think limits the risk of disappointment. But it is important that people know what is going here so they don’t feel obligated to only ever trade the more expensive type pins sold in the parks.

We trade some of our nicer pins that aren’t our favorites hoping to brighten someone else’s day. I just don’t feel obligated to use those type of pins for every trade, and we bought a bulk lot on ebay for ‘fun’ trading.