What age for Pin Trading?

[nyyankeegirl]

We are going to Disney this Sept. and DS will be turning 6 in Nov. I have been thinking about getting him started with pin trading (Disney shopping is having a sale right now!) I have never done it, so I don't know what to expect. My question is, do you think he is too young to start this now, or should we wait for another trip? We will have another mission with the pressed pennies, so I just don't know what to do. Let me know your experiences! Thanks!

 

[ryka]

My kids did this last year. They were 5 and 11. They loved it. The only bad part about it was that every CM they saw with pins they had to stop and see if they wanted to trade. Very time consuming but as I said they loved it and are talking about which pins they are going to trade when we go in Dec.

 

[pixiewings71]

My girls are 7 and 11 and they had a great time Pin Trading this year. This was our first year and we are hooked! LOL The only problem we had was my 7 y.o. can be shy and sometimes she didn't want to ask CM's to trade.....there are also CM's who wear youth lanyards, only kids can trade with them.

 

[tadamom]

My son started pin trading on our trip in May and he was 5. He absolutely loooooved it!! Still talks about it!! The deal that we made was there would be times when he could not trade. If we were pressed for time, then he couldn't. He totally understood that! Good luck!

 

[nyyankeegirl]

I think we might just give it a try. If it's not going well, we can put it aside for another trip. I'll have to come up with some guidelines for him to follow -- not that he's very good at following rules :-( I'm probably more excited about it then he will be ( I guess I'm really the 5 yrd old around here!)

 

[Not so Dumbo]

My kids did this last year. They were 5 and 11. They loved it. The only bad part about it was that every CM they saw with pins they had to stop and see if they wanted to trade. Very time consuming but as I said they loved it and are talking about which pins they are going to trade when we go in Dec.

My 6 yr old did this too. The biggest problem was that he with out notice stopped a CM in the line for Peter Pan and held up the whole crowd for at least a minute and made some people very unhappy. Trying to tell him to hurry up and make up his mind didn't help either.
Needless to say, we set some ground rules after that.

 

[AngieWin]

We did pintrading last month with ds4, ds2, dsd13, and dss12. The older kids got bored with it, but my younger ones loved it! DS4 got into it the most. And ds2 still will pick up his lanyard and say, "Trade?"!!

 

[Yensid_MD]

Our DS2 even traded pins on our last trip to Disney. He just liked the concept of getting and giving. Some of the trades made me cringe, but it his lanyard....

 

[ldo]

if you go every year, or every few years, they can take them back and then trade for other pins as they "Grow out" of their younger interests---ex. DD6 is into princesses, but at 10 she can trade those for any others--it's a really fun thing to do.
You need 6-7 pins for that age---we got the 4 starter set with lanyard and had to buy 2 more pins for each kid, b/c 4 is not enough to trade, b/c they will have favorites. Older DD got a starter set wtih 8 pins---this is really the ideal # and then you really don't have to ever buy anymore.

 

[robyng]

We are new to this "pin trading" thing. If someone has the time, an explanation of how this works would be appreciated. My 6 year old heard about it from his friend. Now he told me he wants to trade when we go. What do I need to do for him so he can do so? Thanks!

 

[nuzmom]

Robyng - here's a link to check out... http://disneyworld.disney.go.com/wdw/special/specialindex?id=DisneyPinTradingPage
You can click at the bottom of that page to go to a more complex offical disney pin trading page.

My kids have been trading for a few years now - started when they were DS4 and DS9. While he was 4, my DS was a little shy about it but did make a few trades. It was funny to see what interested him and what didn't.

Both boys are VERY much into it now. Be careful though - it really is addicting. Both boys have collected about 20 pins each that they will NOT trade and are hanging in a frame in their rooms. That means that they each have about 15 that they take to trade. We started with about 6 pins each!!!!

"Trading" is fun, but "collecting" is really what ends up happening.

I like to buy off of individual sellers on ebay.

 

[robyng]

Thank you for the info nuzmom. I have a feeling we'll be on ebay tonight.

 

[AngieWin]

Our DS2 even traded pins on our last trip to Disney. He just liked the concept of getting and giving. Some of the trades made me cringe, but it his lanyard....

Same here! I only put the pins on DS2's lanyard (and ds4 for that matter) that I would let them trade. They did trade some Hidden Mickeys back to cast members and the cm's made sure it was ok for them to accept them back. I said the same thing, it is his lanyard.

I bought the pins in big lots and would give the boys a new pin out of my bag when they wanted to trade for a new one. That way they werent trading their favorites.

Another thing I did with ds2 was to get the locking pin backs. Before I did that he would take the pins off his lanyard and throw them at people So his lanyard didnt have any pins for awhile.