Wednesday, January 12, 2011

My Pin Trading Experience So Far

I've always been a big Disney fan. When I lived in Florida, I had a pass and drove up to Orlando whenever I had a long weekend. But I never did any pin trading there... in fact, I didn't even know it existed. I saw pins in the stores at the park, and always seeing lots of people buying pins, and wearing their lanyards full of pins but I never knew that so many people were involved in pin trading.
Now that I'm living in LA, I'm much closer to Disneyland- an hour drive at the most versus  a 4 hours drive up to Orlando. My boyfriend and I decided to get a pass and we go whenever we have a day off from work. We finally decided to start pin trading on my birthday back in 2009 and we've enjoyed it ever since!

I don't really consider myself a "hard-core" trader, and I'm still learning about the ways of trading. The way we started out was by trading with the cast members. We love talking the cast members and what better way to start a conversation with them =) I know there's also the traders who have their huge collections in books and lay them out on the tables for you to take a look, and if you see something you like, trade. For some reason, I still feel a little uncomfortable going up to them. I guess to me, they come off a little intimidating. They have such a big collection, and have specific pins they're looking for, and I feel like if I don't have what they're looking for they wouldn't want to trade. I'm not saying that all of them are that way, it's just one of my experiences-the first time I went up to one of the guys, he looked at my lanyard and rolled his eyes... and this was my first day trading so I had whatever pins I bought that day at the park.
This is the first day I started trading. I had nothing on my lanyard, ha ha!
Now I buy pins off the internet so I don't go broke, but someone told me to be aware of "fake/counterfeit" pins! How can you tell between a fake pin and a real pin? Is it by checking the back stamp?

I don't really go after specific pins. Just whatever catches my eye. Currently I've been trading for a lot of Stitch (who doesnt?), Princesses, Tinkerbell, and Silvermist. I'll post some pictures below of my pin collection (so far). If you're a pin trader, what types of pins do you collect, and where/what is the best way of trading? Comment below and let me know =)

I can see myself continuing with pin trading for a while, since I'm having so much fun with it. It also gives my friends and I an extra thing to do at the park. And I'll update this blog as I venture forward with my pin trading experience! 

Here are some of the pins I have
This one is from Disneyland Paris!
This one is from Disneyland Hong Kong
My Star Wars set is almost complete. There's a Donald Duck Darth Maul out there waiting for me ;-)

These are the only pictures I have of my pins, I'll take a picture of them and upload it another day.

~Dee




No comments:

Post a Comment