Originally Published: June 27, 2023
Disney Park Pin Trading started with the Walt Disney World Millennium Celebration, and brought to life the theme “Celebrate the Future Hand in Hand”. I hand you a pin, you hand me a pin. Get it? Hand-to-hand pin trading was a great way to interact with Cast Members (Disney employees) and even other resort guests. Up to the turn of the millennium, the activity was mostly an Olympics tradition, with lots of exchanges between Olympic teams and sponsors. Olympic Village was literally blanketed with blankets laid everywhere all blanketed with the same metal lapel-type pins we collect, just not many Disney characters. It was sheer PINdemonium! A gentleman with Disney Merchandise by the name of Mark Perrotta witnessed this phenomenon and decided this was exactly the kind of madness Disney needed at the parks. He wasn’t far off.
The Pin Pixie Dust proved to be addictive, and the activity soon became a “Disney Tradition”. Disney PIn Trading was being pushed like crazy, and when the Millennium Celebration officially kicked off October 1st (the date WDW first opened) 1999, Disney Stores also launched a collection of low-cost, high-quality pins, one for every day until the turn of the millennium January 1st, 2000. Y2K arrived with great fanfare, and guests flooded Disney parks. Retail pins flew off the shelves, even limited editions of 10-20K. At least at first. “Surprise” and “Mystery” pin releases in limited editions of 500-1000 kept people coming back daily so as not to miss a release or trading opportunity, and often sold out the same day, some within hours. It seemed like there was a new retail pin released every 15 minutes!
On top of that, lots of resort packages came with exclusive pins, some in abundance (PP2) and some with real rarity and very high demand (PP2405). Many lines of business at Disney like the Vacation Club and Cruise Line already had promo pins, and there were service pins (1 year, etc.), awards (PP3685), Media & Press, and gifts (PP2960) that were not for retail sale finding their way onto lanyards thanks to Cast Members with connections.
Trading values varied widely based on scarcity and demand, and naturally, a market developed just as it does with any collectible. With high sale values came a frenzy of dealers, and with the introduction of the eBay auction site around that same time, demand for all collectibles was nuts. Finally, you could get one of those elusive lunchboxes, Barbies or G.I. Joe’s you had as a kid just as easily as the latest Disney pin at the Disney Store in your mall. Scrolling through the eBay listings I’d see pins that retailed for $8-10 selling for 2-10 times that. Collectors wanted anything Disney with a point on the back, and sure seemed willing to pay!
We all learned a lot in those early years about collecting and collectibles. The biggest lesson for me was “what goes around comes around”. Wise Traders cooperated like never before with coast-to-coast pin pals trading one-for-one Disneyland pins for Disney World counterparts and vice-versa. Making friends with other Traders was the best way to make sure each had the other covered if you weren’t lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time.
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Prior to the new millennium I had auditioned for Disney off and on over the course of six years, and finally, in Summer of 1999, I was hired as an actor at the Magic Kingdom. Scoop Sanderson was a new interactive character I portrayed, and my role was essentially to welcome guests to Main Street, U.S.A. at Disney World’s Magic Kingdom park. Disney pins quickly became an obsession for me, and since my job brought me there daily, I frequently went right back into the parks after clocking out from my shift. Lots of us did, and having access to the Company D Cast Member store provided me and my castmates good traders for retail pins when I missed their releases in the parks.
One day it occurred to me that trading with guests might be a cool and unique thing for my character. My Director and the Project Manager for Pin Trading at the Magic Kingdom agreed and the PM provided me a lanyard just like all the front-line CMs were issued. Each had 12 pins and came with some vague guidelines for hand-to-hand trading with guests, among them was never to say no to a guest who wants to trade. I wore my lanyard under my vest and when I saw someone with a lanyard that looked nice, I’d pull it out. There were a lot of the same pins so it wasn’t unusual for guests to say no to me. If this was going to be a thing for my character, I needed to find the goods.
As the new guy on Main Street I roamed the offices on the second floor behind the Main Street facades where the heads of the different lines-of-business had their offices. I’d already popped into the office of the Project Manager for Pin Trading and that worked out pretty well, so I thought I’d explore some more. As everyone knows, it’s the support staff that really run the show, and I started making some friends. It wasn’t long before secretaries were reaching into their desk drawers pulling out bags full of pins for me. Now we were getting somewhere.
And then I remembered a previous job I had back in the late ‘90s selling Disney theme park admissions at local conventions before Pin Trading was a thing. Along with the tickets, Disney provided SWAG (Stuff We All Get) for us to give to conventionEARS: PVC figures, Stickers, and one Mickey head pin in particular. It was litho on brass just like PP41634, only the face was white. I was told they couldn’t sell them because they failed Disney character integrity guidelines - Mickey should have a flesh-colored face just like it appears in PP41634. I dug out the 50 or so I had socked away from the convention days and started trading them.
One of the first friends I met on Main Street was a gentleman named Dean. He was the guy that wandered the park every morning to find the Honorary Grand Marshalls for the afternoon parade. Dean wore a Jiminy Cricket Trainer pin PP21890 on his lapel and he had the Partners in Excellence pin PP19105 on his nametag. He told me he was frequently offered big bucks for the service pins he wore, but naturally, he declined. He suggested I wear my Mickey SWAG pin on my lapel as it would be much more meaningful to the guests that I gave them to or traded, and boy was he right. Soon Scoop was sought after specifically for that pin.
There were a lot of aggressive Pin Traders at the time, and they became easy to identify by reputation if not actual observation. They’d come to find Scoop and my Mickey head, and straight-up point to my lapel and tell me “I want to trade for that.” The rule at the time was a Cast Member could not decline a trade. But I was different. I was a “Citizen of Main Street”. Pushy Pin Traders would tell me since I worked for Disney I had to trade. I told them I work for the Main Street Gazette, and though I’m familiar with Mr. Disney and his boy Walt, I don’t work for him. Nobody likes a “Pin Prick”, and I’d eventually and regularly explain that people who work for Mr. Disney were in no way obligated to trade pins off their clothes, just like Dean explained to me. Many traders walked away stumped if not frustrated. Nice people - my new Pin Pals - were offered my lanyard with the desk drawer treasures, and if you had good manners, even the Mickey head off my vest. Over the years I became famous for rewarding friendly trading, and those in the know enjoyed watching me guide errant Traders away from “The Dark Side”.
Lots of Seasoned Traders were bringing newbies to me to work my magic with manners and show them “The Way”. It became more important than ever for me to dive deep and know my stuff.
Two very dear Pin Pals were a couple I met on Main Street by the name of Figgy and Britt. Figgy took her nickname because of her obsession with the Figment purple dinosaur character from The Journey into Imagination at EPCOT. Britt was a computer whiz, and it wasn’t long before they developed a database for pins called PinPics.com. One day they showed up on Main Street and we ducked into the barbershop at Center Street (the cross street now long gone) and they showed me their new invention on a relatively new device called the Palm Pilot. A primitive version of our smartphones today, this handheld computer was a source of great excitement at the time, and the PinPics database made this a must-have for those who could afford it.
My paycheck was very good but I spent way too much money on pins, and unlike regular guests, I was unable to resell as doing so went against company policy. But I could use PinPics on my old Gateway clunker at home, and so began my pathway to becoming a Disney Pin Expert. Thanks to the PinPics UGC (User Generated Content), we all continue to this day, 23 years hence, to use PinPics as a trusted source for Disney PINformation. PinPics has had some growing pains over the years, but that is changing fast. Under the new ownership of Molly and Joe (MoJo) there is a new era of love, care and concern for the site and its users. As a Disney Pin Collector since the advent of Pin Trading, I have never been more enthusiastic to recommend and refer collectors to the site. There are a lot of kinks that are being worked out, and along with the refinement of many old features, there are many new capabilities being developed very quickly as well.
I’d like to encourage you to give PinPics.com another look. I ask you to give the new owners the opportunity to prove their commitment to providing the Disney Pin Community a valuable resource not only for PINfo but for pin fellowship as well. I ask you kindly share your feedback and challenges with the search features and incorrect content as you come across it. PinPics exists thanks to what was once an enthusiastic community of collectors, and PinPics wants to be the Pin Palace and Gathering Place where each collector is king, queen, and everything in between. You’re officially invited to join the Pin Party, and we’re just getting started!
Holland Hayes (aka Scoop Sanderson)
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