What's with the Pins?

[Betzee]

Okay, this is probably a very obvious newbie question, but what's the deal with the "pins?" I'm seeing posts all over about trading pins and not sure I'm getting it.

Who do you trade with?

Where do you get pins to start with? Is there some special thing you use to keep your pins on? It seems like people don't actually wear them?

Thanks for any info....I'd rather be "dumb" here on the boards, than once I get there!!

 

[BeckityBobbidyBoo!]

Trading Pins! Although my kids actually don't like to trade, they just want to buy their favorite characters and keep them. You can buy a lanyard and place pins on there. My dd put them on her purse, some people put them on hats. They were about $5, but maybe that avg. has gone up, there are more expensive ones. Kids and adults get into pin collecting and trading. If you want to trade, the employees (what is that term for Disney employees?) will trade, you can even trade with other guests. My kids just collect their fav characters. There are 'millions' of different pins. I think I might collect a few on the next trip. They are a fun momento. At Disney, every shop has pins, some are specific to the park you are visiting. There are pins kiosks everywhere as well. You could get some pins from ebay to start before you go. I'm sure the Disney Store has them too.

 

[bebelle]

I get a pin from each hotel we stay at. I also collect pins of my favorite princess, Belle. I get a "year" pin each year we visit. I have a travelon bag I use in WDW on which I put the pins. My son also collects and trades pins. He has them displayed in an album. He buys pins on ebay before our trip and trades those pins at the parks or on the cruise. He trades mostly with cast members and sometimes with other WDW guests. It is fun to look over our collection. We have some very special pins that hold signifigant sentimental value.

 

[mickeylove2]

We went to mousepinsonline dot com and bought a grab bag of pins...less than $2 per pin, put them on a lanyard and I let me girls trade with ONLY CM's at the parks, this was great for helping them communicate with adults that they don't see regularly. The pins in the parks were as expensive as about $15 each, the ones that I saw. We let them pick a few that they liked but didn't trade those, I'm sure glad we bought some before we left home! I've heard of people saying that they buy the starter set from the parks, that's like $10 or so and you get a lanyard and about 5 pins, well that wouldn't have lasted an hour with mine, they went through 50 pins in 5 days and LOTS of pins got re-traded! I bought a Princess lanyard from Disney shopping, it was the lanyard, the metal clip that hangs on the bottom, and 1 LE pin, for $19.95, I bought some other things so I got to use a free shipping code and I also had a 25% off code, so I figure I spent about $15 on that, in the park you could get a lanyard for about $5-10 and the clip for $6-8 and a pin for $5-10, so I guess I did alright the way I went! I also got a grab bag of 50 pins for $90 plus shipping. You can also get pins on E-Bay. HTH!

 

[Momvic5]

My children (11, 8, and 6) traded pins this past December for the first time and absolutely loved it. I think it was one of the highlights of our trip. My children really only traded with CMs, and the CMs were all so very nice and patient. My 11 and 8 year olds were very choosy and were always on a mission to find certain pins while my 6 year old just looked for character pins he liked. We traded and re-traded pins many times.

We bought our pins and lanyards on ebay before our trip, and it saved us a great deal of money. My children still talk about their pins. They hold great memories.

 

[ATGMom]

Wow that sounds like fun, I think my daughter would love this! I will have to be sure and get some pins before our trip!

 

[Roo's Kanga]

How is the quality of the pins that you buy on eBay and through mousepinsonline.com? Do the castmembers give you any grief over trading those for "better" pins?

 

[becca011906]

How time consuming can this be??? we were thinking of letting DS do this maybe DD5 .... but we were worried it'd take to much time away from the parks, and since we are going the week before Easter we are thinking it might be a little to busy to do this as well.... maybe we should just try autographs since we have never done that either... ??? hummm

 

[swimgalsmom]

How time consuming can this be??? we were thinking of letting DS do this maybe DD5 .... but we were worried it'd take to much time away from the parks, and since we are going the week before Easter we are thinking it might be a little to busy to do this as well.... maybe we should just try autographs since we have never done that either... ??? hummm

We were there the week before Christmas and I too was worried that it was going to be too time consuming but really it wasn't. Both my dd's (ages11 and 3) had pins to trade. They would go to the park with 4 or 5 on their lanyards. I didn't want to load them down too much. It really didn't change our touring plans although they would look at the CM's closely as we were walking around. If they spotted CM with a pin they wanted to trade for we would go up the CM. They were always very accomodating and it only takes a minute to trade the pins. Once my girls traded those 4-5 pins they didn't trade anymore until the next day. The new ones were ones they wanted to keep.
They had a great time trading, I am really glad I let them do it.

 

[Roo's Kanga]

Do they have trading pins to buy and trade on the Disney cruises as well?

 

[liznboys]

I held off on getting us into the pins, because I KNEW we would all go nuts and want to collect them once we did. We started collecting early last year I guess it was. It is so fun!! My boys love picking out pins, and they do trade with CM's. My dh and I love them too, we all have lanyards.

Read this:
http://allearsnet.com/btp/mil_pin.htm

 

[UP Disney]

The collectors board has a great thread with some DISers that help people avoid buying the cheap pins.

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=1267432

I don't remember all the details but they are a big help. I did buy a lot of 100 pins from ebay and got some great pins for about $1.85 each (which included shipping). I made sure I got some help from some of the "experts" on what to avoid. I can't wait for our June trip so that my DD's, niece & nephew & I can trade! I have enjoyed trading on past visits.

 

[UP Disney]

Also, wanted to make sure you know that the castmembers with green lanyards will only trade with children. This is really cool for the kids. I didn't see where that was posted on this thread.

 

[mickeylove2]

How is the quality of the pins that you buy on eBay and through mousepinsonline.com? Do the castmembers give you any grief over trading those for "better" pins?

I've never bought pins from Ebay, but the pins we got from mousepinsonline were very nice pins, none of the CMs said anything about them not being tradeable or anything...I don't know too much about pins! Lots of the pins we got were LE and Cast lanyard pins, a few propins too, but they were still nice. Actually, I had a harder time letting my girls trade some of their pins for some of the pins on the CM lanyards, LOTS of the pins that my girls got in return were trash, IMHO. But they were theirs and I let them do what they wanted!!

 

[mickeylove2]

How time consuming can this be??? we were thinking of letting DS do this maybe DD5 .... but we were worried it'd take to much time away from the parks, and since we are going the week before Easter we are thinking it might be a little to busy to do this as well.... maybe we should just try autographs since we have never done that either... ??? hummm

What we told my girls was that they couldn't just stop and go off to a CM to trade. We had a system, they would trade with a CM as soon as we got in the gate, then we would go into the customer service place right inside the gate, not only do they have nice pins but they also give the kids buttons, and my girls many times received extra pins when they traded! Then we would trade with the CMs at the front of the lines while waiting for rides, you know when you get about 5 people back and have to wait 10 or 15 minutes anyway. We also did character autographs and pics, so they would trade with the CM with the character while we were in line or while I waited in line, my DH would take them to a CM who was standing alone. While we were sitting and eating they would trade with CMs, the people cleaning and also the CMs just walking around. While we were waiting for parades and fireworks and the CMs working the registers. So it really didn't take a lot of time from our day, they pretty much just traded while we were just standing there waiting. Did that make sense???

 

[duffy]

Is it still true that if you want to trade for a pin that a cast member has, they HAVE to trade with you?

I've stocked up on pins for my daughter and neice, it will be interesting to see what they come home with on their lanyards.

 

[mickeylove2]

From what I have been told, they have to trade UNLESS they have the same pin on their lanyard. You might want to check out the collectors board about this.

 

[duffy]

From what I have been told, they have to trade UNLESS they have the same pin on their lanyard. You might want to check out the collectors board about this.

Thanks!!