Pin Trading for Teens?

[CalGal]

I've managed to avoid pin trading, but now that my DS is 14 and no longer collects autographs, I thought this might be a fun adventure for him for our next trip. Is this a good activity for a 14 year old? He's not much of a talker, so I perhaps this will help him become a little more extroverted. We went to the Winter Olympics a few years back and got into collecting some Olympic pins then, so I think that has made him mildly interested. I read some earlier threads on pin trading recommending starter kits, E-bay and other web-sites, but I'm still a little apprehensive.

Is this a good idea?

How do you identify "collector" pins?

How do you know if you are getting "tradeable" pin from websites?

Other advice?

 

[Disneyland_emily]

Good Idea? Always but be warned its ADDICTING... One thing I would suggest is that before you even really get started to pick a theme or categories as it can help IMMENSILY narrow down the "I wants and I needs"

There is no easy way to determine valuable pins unless ya know- The limited Edition ones are labeled on the back but not all LEs are "valuable" and if you are trading with CMs very very very rarely will you find a valuable one...

As for tradeable they must be hard enamel and have the disney copyright on the back- Most of the times on ebay they will state what they are- and if any doubts I'd plug the pin description into www.pinpics.com and see what they say about it. (find the search button then trigger the appropriate groups and then on the next screen plug in the basic description say "Pluto bone" and itd come up with all the pins that fit that description)

I've been pin collecting for 5 years now and own over 400 pins but I only collect ones that have meaning behind them so they mean more than just "a collection" I do buy pins from ebay and off friends that I use to trade cause well I love that too

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If you are going to be at DL this summer (June 24ish-August something) they'll be doing a pin event that has the trade boards coming back- The trade boards are awesome as you line up and then you have 2 min to trade up to 2 pins off the board so its a fun and easy way to trade- ALso it looks like the come out and trade thing will keep going at Plaza Gardens at I think its 2-3 pm daily where they have a handful of CMs with lanyards in one place

Another site to mention is www.dizpins.com which keeps very up to date release info if you are looking to see if anything new will be released when there-

-em

 

[CalGal]

Great info. Thanks! My son indicated that he'd be interested in collecting pins based on DL attractions, as opposed to character pins or movie pins. Are the CMs likely to have many attraction pins?

 

[Disneyland_emily]

Its hit or miss- That would be a harder theme to trade for as there just arnt as many in circulation compared to character ones but it could be done and there are some nice pins based on the different attractions-

One set that would be impossible to trade for but is really awesome (currently harder to find though) is the gold attraction set- This is the Autopia pin of the set http://pinpics.com/cgi-bin/pin.cgi?pin=38474&sid=2622.1119167797.v2

I've never really been on the lookout for attraction pins but I bet you'd find some

-em