Hidden Mickey Pins Missing - Disney Error Pins

[hopemax]

Sometimes Disney makes errors on an entire run of pins.  This is what happened for the T-Shirt collection of WDW Hidden Mickey Series in 2011.  The series was supposed to be a collection of 10 pins.  Plus, that year they introduced the silver chasers, however they did not include photos of the silver chasers on the checklist (so for this part of history, you can't check the checklist for verification).  When the pins were initially released, collectors realized two errors were made. First, Mickey... the "chaser" versions were released as filled with colored enamel, just as if they were the regular version.  You can distinguish the chaser and non-chaser versions because the numbering on the back of the pin.  The regular, filled pins had numbers X of 10.  The incorrect chaser versions were numbered X of 20 (there were 10 silver chasers for Wave A, and 10 silver chasers for Wave B for a total of 20). The regular pin is #85550 but the incorrectly released chaser was #85888 and this pin has been removed from the database.

 

The second error by Disney is more complicated to explain, but affects the Figaro T-shirt.  They made a regular pin, but there was a color error in the bottom corners of the pin.  They were supposed to be white, on this pin they were black.  This pin is numbered 3 of 10.  This is pin #85763.  The chaser version was supposed to be all silver, but they made it with colored enamel.  Only this time, they got the corners the correct color of white.  But as this was supposed to be a silver chaser it is marked 17 out of 20.  This pin was numbered #85515 and this pin has been removed from the database.

 

Eventually these two pins were produced correctly, in silver, but for several months the only "chasers" of these two pins you could find on lanyards were the incorrect color filled ones.  They didn't pull them, and they are NOT counterfeits or scrappers.  Even though this was a mistake by the factory, by Disney releasing them onto lanyards, these color filled chasers became legitimately released pins and completionist collectors would want to record both of them in their Pinpics inventory.  This is similar to what happened when Disney incorrectly released #59003 with a spelling error and then released the correct spelling one later #62218.  Both exist, both are real.  The only way I was able to find the numbers of the originally released chasers that are now missing is because that information fragment was included in the description of the correctly released silver chasers.

 

This is one of the types of problems that occurs when people who were not collecting at the time these things happen, come in and try to clean up the listings.  Valuable historical information gets lost and / or changed because people don't *know* it happened and think these were simply duplicate listings or an error affecting a few pins out of the total run.  Newer collectors might obtain these pins and incorrectly assume they are fake pins.  But this information was widely known by Hidden Mickey collectors in 2011.  It is the responsibility of a database site like this to retain all relevant information regarding the release of all pins, but especially when Disney makes a mistake because it's the only way to preserve this part of  Disney Pin History.   

[buzz2001]

@skeet330 @Dragon57 @mollyanne

Edited February 29 by buzz2001

[Dragon57]

@hopemax

We are working on fixing the missing pins and will be linking all the correct pins that go to the WDW and DLR sets including the two filled in chasers. DLR will have 11 T-Shirts, 10 regular pins and 1 completer pin and WDW will have 10 regular pins and 4 chaser pins. It is taking a little time but we will get there so we don't lose any information about these pins. As I have all of these pins we will have all the pictures (front and back) to identify them. I am trying to be a Hidden Mickey completest so this is important to me personally.

I hope this addresses your concerns.

[hopemax]

Unfortunately only half. I made this post publicly, because when I used the comment system on another item earlier this year (not Hidden Mickey related). The result wasn’t that item number getting fixed, but completely replaced with a type of listing that was prohibited by previous PinPics management at that time. The item that was originally associated with that number is now not in the database. So I had zero confidence this issue would be addressed appropriately. 
 

So while I’m glad this issue is getting attention, it doesn’t erase my doubts of what else has been changed erroneously and went, and still are, unnoticed. 

[Dragon57]

Unfortunately the site was hacked a few years ago (before the current owners) and the team of us volunteers are working on correcting issues, missing information and some incorrect information that was put in or outright missed. There is over 136,000 pins and it will take time to get everything fixed. The new owners (they bought it in 2021) are working hard and putting in a lot of money to make the site better and accurate and adding new features.

[hopemax]

The problem with this explanation being satisfactory, is that in May 2021, I saved a copies of my Owns, Wants and Trades and both Hidden Mickey pins I reference as being deleted are included in those screenshots.  Their removal obviously happened after.  The second issue, I sent the comment in either December 2023 or January 2024.

 

Unless you're saying the website was hacked after January 2024?

[mollyanne]

2 hours ago, hopemax said:

Unfortunately only half. I made this post publicly, because when I used the comment system on another item earlier this year (not Hidden Mickey related). The result wasn’t that item number getting fixed, but completely replaced with a type of listing that was prohibited by previous PinPics management at that time. The item that was originally associated with that number is now not in the database. So I had zero confidence this issue would be addressed appropriately. 
 

So while I’m glad this issue is getting attention, it doesn’t erase my doubts of what else has been changed erroneously and went, and still are, unnoticed. 

Hope - Let me know the Pin Name and Number and I will look into it - of the one you commented on. Mistakes happen and if it did we will own it and fix it. We are about being part of the solution......The site is getting accolades from across the pin community. If a mistake happened we will fix it. 

[hopemax]

The pin number is 43202.  You can see in the included image from my Owns inventory that I saved in May 2021. It was correctly listed as the Accessory Map for the 2005 Merry Christmas Pin Pursuit.

 

When I left the comment in either January or December, the photo had been changed to the one that is currently listed for that number, all of the pins, and no map, but the Title and Description still referenced the Accessory Map's information.

 

The screenshot from today shows the incorrect image, and that the Accessory information was replaced with information describing the complete set, as if the listing had always been this way, even though during the Yenne's ownership (as evident by the 40,000 range for the PP#), listing sets like this was specifically not allowed, to prevent the database from growing even more exponentially.  

 

If this is what the process of fixing information looks like, I honestly don't know what I'm supposed to take from this.

[mollyanne]

Hope - I added back in the picture of the pins on the GWP Map. That picture is extremely small and low res. Which is why I am sure the picture was replaced 
with the picture of all of the pins. I agree we need to also have the picture of this map. The listing information is about the entire set of pins....meaning if someone

wanted to trade for this entire set they could choose want and those that wanted to trade it could obviously choose trade. The old picture is a picture of the map 

with all of the pins on the map. 

 

I am going to look at who owns the pin to see if I can get a better picture of the art. We can now show multiple pictures within the pin listing. I want to have as much information as possible to describe the pins for the new collectors, the old collectors and to preserve the history. What I am sure happened here was that someone previous to us moving over the site in March of 2023 to new servers submitted this as a Suggested Image. My husband approved it.....we will discuss this moving forward as we could have just added the picture of all the pins as a new picture. Not in the old system, but in the new system we can. I may go and look through all of the map/gwp items to see if we need to add pictures to those listings as well.

[hopemax]

Since you are examining the Map items, I found another type of error that affects multiple listings.  

 

At the first Epcot Pin Event in 2001, there was a purchase activity that involved visiting different parts of World Showcase buying a pin and getting a stamp on the back of another Map Accessory. Upon completion of this event, participants received a free pin. Obviously, this means the pins were released at Epcot, which is of course, located at Walt Disney World.  The number for the Map is 6888.  The pins are 6243-6251.

 

Four of the pins, and the map have the Origin as "DL - Disneyland California." 

 

I have a copy from Pinpics I made in 2013, which at that time had everything designated as Walt Disney World, except one pin has Multiple.  It is possible, because at that time not all Event pins were exclusive and were only debuted at the event, that Multiple is a correct designation.  But what I do know is that WDW and Multiple should be the only correct options for this set of pins, and definitely not Disneyland.  And the map accessory would not have been released anywhere but WDW.

[hopemax]

And another listing that was originally for the Accessory Map that was replaced by the set of pins at some point after I saved my Owns in May 2021 - 60740

 

The issue with these types of replacements, instead of creating new listings to represent the complete set, if that is what is desired, is that it changes what a *User's* Inventory represents.  If I added the map to my inventory it's because I own the map.  Now the inventory says I own the complete set, which is erroneous.  So these changes aren't just affecting Encyclopedia type information, it's messing with User data, about their own collections.

 

Should I expect to find more of these replacements, where I can't even trust that what I own is accurately reflected, not through actions I've taken, but PinPics?