Tip Tuesday: Pin trading -- the family fun way

Walk into a few Disney Stores or shops in a Disney Park and you will quickly notice they all have something in common (besides being owned by Disney), they all have pins. In the case of some shops in the parks, there are hundreds, if not, thousands lining the walls. What do you do with all these pins? Well many collect them. There are standard pins, special edition pins, limited edition pins, limited special release only for a certain event and to a certain group pins, it goes on and on. Some pins can become quite rare and VERY valuable to serious collectors.

Then there's the fun part of pins: Pin Trading.

Now in my opinion, there are two kinds of pin trading, serious trading and family fun trading.

Serious pin trading is akin to trading baseball cards -- two collectors looking to find that super rare pin or score a deal. It's a lot like buying a car, there's haggling, multi-pin offers and all that mess. Personally, I don't like to trade with a serious collector. I always get the feeling they're trying to rip me off, kind of like me trading away a Babe Ruth or Mickey Mantle for some obscure card. I don't pay attention to the values of pins, so I really don't know what's a good deal and what's not.

Many of these pins were acquired by pin trading with cast members.

I much prefer the family fun trading. How does this work, you ask? Family fun trading takes place with Disney cast members only. Nearly every cast member walks around with a lanyard full of pins. You can approach any cast member and offer to trade any pin of yours with one of theirs. It's as simple as that. This also is a great chance to talk with some of the cast members - they are wonderful people who work hard to make your time at Disney as magical as it can be.

My kids love this kind of pin trading. They especially like it because my wife and I collect pins and our kids get a real kick out of showing us new pins they've traded for. This makes our pin collection priceless, not because the pins have some incredible value of their own, but because each pin has a meaning and a memory associated with it. Pin trading is another great way for families to enjoy Disney.

So what's the tip in all this? In order to trade with a cast member, you have to have pins, or "pin fodder," as I call it. You could go to a shop and purchase a few pins (at anywhere from about $6 to $15 each) OR try this little trick I'm trying out next week.

I went onto Ebay and searched for "Disney pin lot." There are some folks out there who have access to TONS of pins and they sell them in lots. They are usually basic mass-produced pins. The trick is to find a group of pins for less than $2 a pin. I won a bid for 40 pins for less than $70. Of those, we decided to keep about five or six. The rest are on lanyards and ready for trading. We did get a few duplicates, which is no big deal since I'm trading them away.

Like anything with Ebay, you have to be careful what you bid on. You want authentic Disney pins that come from cast members. No off-quality pins (like sedesmas or European pins).

If you do some careful shopping ahead of your trip, you should be able to get a good stock of "pin fodder" at a far less cost than what you would pay in a Disney Store or in a park shop.

Happy pin trading everyone!

Oh, and here's a Disney news release about pin trading.

P.S.: There won't be a Tip Tuesday next week as I will be at WDW. I hope to bring material for LOTS of posts, so stay tuned!!!