kollerbear
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- May 25, 2011
Hi! I am relatively new to Disney pin trading-- I did a lot of research before my trip, bought a lot of sealed bags of mystery pins on eBay before going (and they were all real!) and did a lot of trading on my trip in January 2017. I had fun, but definitely discovered that the vast majority of the pins I was seeing (like, maybe 75-80% of the pins) were fakes or scrappers. I did my best to take my time without being rude, and returned several pins to cast members after realizing they were fake. What I walked away with felt like a good mix of pins, but I also kind of thought that possibly the Hidden Mickey pins (which I hadn't seen before) might just be a slightly lower quality pin than open edition ones I'd bought.
WELL.
I started trading on Instagram the past week or so, and I took the time to sit down and pour over the pins I brought back from the park. I discovered that 10 out of the 11 that I walked away with were almost definitely fakes (albeit really good ones) and the 11th might be as well.
I do NOT want to put more fakes into circulation, but I also am super discouraged because this means that the % of fakes on the lanyards and boards was probably closer to something like 95% or higher. I am wondering how you guys manage this. Personally, I like the hobby and I like the pins. But I also don't have an infinite amount of money to pour into this hobby if every pin I find is ethically un-tradeable. Also, I would love for my daughter to be able to participate in this one day. While I don't mind if the 15 real pins I buy her turn into 15 fakes ones overnight, I will NOT pull off those 15 fake pins every night of our trip and just keep replacing them with real ones in a Sisyphean effort to do the right thing.
What do you guys do? I am really curious how anyone keeps their chin up trading pins these days. I feel like you either have fun OR you care about the ethics of the situation, but you kind of can't do both.
WELL.
I started trading on Instagram the past week or so, and I took the time to sit down and pour over the pins I brought back from the park. I discovered that 10 out of the 11 that I walked away with were almost definitely fakes (albeit really good ones) and the 11th might be as well.
I do NOT want to put more fakes into circulation, but I also am super discouraged because this means that the % of fakes on the lanyards and boards was probably closer to something like 95% or higher. I am wondering how you guys manage this. Personally, I like the hobby and I like the pins. But I also don't have an infinite amount of money to pour into this hobby if every pin I find is ethically un-tradeable. Also, I would love for my daughter to be able to participate in this one day. While I don't mind if the 15 real pins I buy her turn into 15 fakes ones overnight, I will NOT pull off those 15 fake pins every night of our trip and just keep replacing them with real ones in a Sisyphean effort to do the right thing.
What do you guys do? I am really curious how anyone keeps their chin up trading pins these days. I feel like you either have fun OR you care about the ethics of the situation, but you kind of can't do both.