what happened to pin trading?

[chartle]

Very few CMs seem to have lanyards and there are fewer pins in the shops, even the dedicated ones like in frontier land. There were at least three sections that used to pins.

With so few cms i had at least two guests approach me asking me to trade.

It's been 18 months since I've been here.

 

[networktek]

When we were in WDW in Oct almost all cast members we meet had pin lanyards and most cleaning staff had lanyards they still in force the green lanyards just for kid trading but we found the higher up mangers that had the belt clip style lanyard had the best pins.

 

[chartle]

When we were in WDW in Oct almost all cast members we meet had pin lanyards and most cleaning staff had lanyards they still in force the green lanyards just for kid trading but we found the higher up mangers that had the belt clip style lanyard had the best pins.

Well just left a way too long line at tsmm and did not see a single guest with pins. I'm going to look at the cms more carefully tomorrow. It was mostly the lack of pins in the stores that shocked me.

 

[sharonped]

Bummer! We love pin trading. Hope that's not going away along with everything else.

 

[mom2rtk]

Well, it's hard to keep a pin collection on a magic band.

Band accessories might be surging, but lanyard sales have to be tanking.

 

[minniebeth]

We love to buy, collect and trade pins. We usually buy some pins as souvenirs each trip, and always have a stash to trade. We've found that no matter how hard we've looked for trading pins on CM's lanyards the past few trips, the pins have pretty much all been the same uninteresting pins from either common sets or mystery pins. You see them over and over again, in the parks, stores, resorts, etc. I thought for sure I'd see different ones on my trip this summer in Disneyland, nope, they were the same!
We love to buy resort pins from each resort we've stayed at. Either we go too often, or they need to change their resort pins once in a while...
Seriously, they have some of the same resort pins for quite a while.
So, ultimately, we end up buying less pins~ (which is a good thing according to my DH)
Another example we noticed where they had less selection was at Epcot for the holiday season this year. Last year, they had several pins to choose from for the Candlelight Processional, Holidays Around the World, etc. They even had a separate pin collection from Holidays Around the World with the characters and countries. This year, they did not have that special collection, and they only had one pin for each the CP and HATW. Definitely a smaller selection pool this year.
We've also noticed a big cut in selection of DCL pins over the past couple of years.

We still always find pins to buy, but we notice the selection is not as varied as it used to be for sure. It seems like pins are sticking around longer too.
As far as trading, we haven't traded much with what's out there.

We still keep hunting though...

 

[Happyjen27]

We found no shortage of CMs to trade with this week, we are casual traders. It still provides such fun for the littles.

 

[Disney_Princess83]

We found no shortage of CM's wearing lanyards or boards available in the shops. You have to ask, many stores have books under the counters

 

[the_princess]

Two weeks ago in Disneyland, I was also a bit disappointed with the pin trading. The CMs all had the same pins from the sets or those mystery bags. I found one pin from beauty and the beast, that was a little special. When I traded, the CM told me he got it like 2 mins ago. So I guess you have to be quick and lucky to get the interesting ones.

 

[PanamaMike]

I just returned from a two week trip to WDW and saw many lanyards on cast members and looked at many pin books, binders, boards, drums, suitcases, hats, etc in the shops.

The real problem is the same cheap pins over and over and over again.

In the end I managed to add just three pins to my collection.

I still had fun talking pins with people but the time spent looking vs. actually finding ones you are interested in really makes me think it might be time to hang up the lanyard.

 

[Autumnslight]

Maybe it's a matter of dumb luck, but we found tons of cool pins in the shops, both in the park and the resort shops, just last week. There were also tons of cast members with lanyards or the belt clip style pin holders.

I did notice that the resort shops and the higher-up management type CMs seemed to have "better", or more unusual/uncommon, pins. I quickly started not to be shy about saying "Excuse me" and stopping a CM if they happened to be walking past me and I saw they had a bunch of pins. They always seemed happy enough to stop and trade with us, and didn't make it seem like we were bothering them at all.

My son also found a bunch of CMs with "mystery" pins, and got some very cool pins that way. Some of the CMs would ask a trivia question in order to show the mystery pin, others would have him trade for it sight-unseen if he wanted it, and some would just let him see it if he asked, and then decide if he wanted to trade for it. It was a lot of fun.

All in all, we traded over 100 pins last week, and could have easily traded more, but we ran out of pins we were willing to give up!

 

[xie]

It's still there, but it's not as big as it used to be.

My theory is that it's a casualty of two things - first, it's been around a LONG time, and sometimes people get tired of a hobby and move on; and second, in the scheme of things, it can be expensive. We used to buy a few pins each trip, but at $8-12 per, it was one of the first things to get cut from the budget when the economy got bad and our income became stagnant. Because everything else at WDW keeps costing more and we have basically the same amount to spend per trip as we had 5 years ago. Most of the money that used to get spent on extra souvenirs and stuff now goes to pay for the room nights.

(Yeah, I know you can buy "cheap pins" online and take them to the parks and trade them etc., but nobody in our family is in love with pin trading enough to go through all that effort.)

I suspect Vinylmations are heading the same way. They haven't had the same lasting popularity as pins, and they are already a bit harder to find. Our kid likes them and buys one with his souvenir money each trip though.

 

[Disneychix]

DS 'traded' a pin by Crystal Palace in MK. I heard this taping sound and thought I was losing it. Finally looked at his shoe and there was Christmas Tinkerbell stuck right in there!

We don't trade pins but I can say I didn't see nearly as many people wearing lanyards.

 

[Autumnslight]

We don't trade pins but I can say I didn't see nearly as many people wearing lanyards.

My family loves pin trading, but we don't actually wear them on our lanyards. It's too easy to lose them that way, as we sadly learned! We have them in pouches or bags instead, so just to look at us, you wouldn't know that we're into pin trading.

 

[LilyWDW]

I do not trade, but I do collect. I use locking backs for those on my lanyard. The reason I collect pins is because I can get multiple pins for the cost of even a T-shirt. My favorites are pins for Haunted Mansion and Tower of Terror. They are always fun! I do this as a way to "remember" specific rides or situations from the trip. For example, I did CP dinner one time and had a GREAT interaction with Eeyore. After dinner, I bought an Eeyore pin to remember that by.

 

[angierae]

We were disappointed in pin trading in October - we weren't wearing ours because we didn't feel like wearing a lanyard since we had MBs, but we found that plenty of cast members had pins - but we saw the same ones over and over and over. I collect Muppet and Stitch pins, and I think I got one Stitch pin and zero Muppet pins in three days. My daughter is a bit more eclectic in her collecting but she still commented on how few she found that she liked. Lots and lots of duplicates.

 

[nkereina]

We love the pins but frankly, they are too expensive! We would have gotten into trading but it's hard for us to consider when some pins are $10-15 a pop.

 

[cbreg1]

Hello. I love the Chase in finding a certain pin for my collection. Unfortunately, with so many scrappers on lanyards, I have lost some of the excitement.

 

[PrettyFlower2]

I'm going to bring my whole collection of pins in June. They better watch out! (My collection consists of 5 pins) including one that may or may not be a scrapper...

 

[taterheads]

Stupid question- what's a scrapper?