Help Needed re: Disneyland pins...

[tigger2esq]

I will be making my very first trip to Disneyland in just TWO WEEKS! I need help on what pins to be on the lookout for. I am a huge Princess/Cinderella fan and also like Tinkerbell and Tigger and other miscellaneous Mickey/Minnie stuff. Any really cool (rack or LE's) I should keep my eyes peeled for???

 

[Luv2Roam]

Good luck on finding any LE's in DL/DCA besides just a few boxed sets. Your fellow pin traders are about the only way to get them at DL/DCA.
I was disappointed in that at DL last week.

 

[janelady]

Hi, there are several great pins out, including some LEs that you can find on the racks. The ones I really like are the Fab 5 in the Monorail, Blue Convertible, and Walt's Train. There are also many Tinker Bell pins that have just been released. Sometimes they sell out but the are open stock so keep checking.

The LEs that are available are pretty rare but you can find them. I just recently found some Easter Pooh pins that I thought had sold out.

There is a new Snow White sitting by the Wishing Well pin and a Cinderella and Grand Duke with glass slipper pin that were just released and are still available.

On Sunday nights, there are a lot of traders that come out to trade at the Disney Showcase on Main Street.

Trading isn't as prevalent at DCA but there are some great pins there too. There is a set of pins of the Fab 5 snorkeling/scuba diving.

So have a great time! Lanyard trading has improved since the new guidelines. You can only trade enamel/cloisonne pins. But in return, you can find some great pins on lanyards.

 

[Luv2Roam]

If the lanyard trading has improved, I would have hated to see it before.
There are some neat pins. I bought many myself. For example, I do have the convertible and the monorail pins mentioned above. I love my Laod Bhang Pin Trader and Lucky Fortune Cookery. None of these are LE's, but very nice pins.
You won't be short on trying to find nice pins to buy. But when I was in WDW in January, LE's were plentiful everywhere. Not so when I was in DL/DCA last week. Very disappointed in that.
I did buy the HM boxed pin set. They had other boxed sets that were LE's, but nothing I wanted to shovel out the bucks for.
And how can I REALLY complain when I lucked out on the mystery pin? I never thought I would have the opportunity to buy any w/o buying through an auction.

 

[peoplemover]

OK, I'm thinking this isn't entirely accurate about the DL lanyards. I was at DL from April 25th till May 8th, I think it was; that's almost 2 weeks. May 5th is when the big switch happened at DL. Let me explain what the lanyards were like before the big rules change. There were 2 men who would go around the parks and dump these cheap-o pins made overseas, they were very thin, possibly even plastic, with a smooth gold finish on the back and a smooth nail-polish-like layer of epoxy over painted characters on the front. These people probably got these pins for about a nickel or a dime apiece. EVERY lanyard was plastered with these pins as well as mini-map pins on about one in every 10 lanyards. There were no official Disney pins, no cloisonne pins, nothing, unless you got out there very early in the morning and happened upon a manager who would care enough to have his/her lanyard redone overnight. This had been the case for some time. If you traded with a CM for anything off of their lanyards, you were trading WAY down, quality-wise and money-wise!!!

Fast forward to May 5. Official Disney CLOISONNE pins!!! Knock me over with a feather, there were some LE's on the lanyards! Those cheap-o nickel and dime pins were no longer on the lanyards. During the days leading up to May 5, my family and I spotted lots of managers going around with baggies full of the cheap-o pins showing them to CM's to teach them what not to accept after the 5th. The lanyard improvements were VAST and very good; the parade pins are LE 5000 each. So to complain that there is nothing good on the lanyards even though there are official Disney cloisonne LE pins on them now is not giving DL enough credit. They did so much work to improve the lanyards, and you can find a great variety of pins on them. Parade pins + attraction pins + character pins. You just have to look hard enough. Also the super traders at DL and DCA ALWAYS have wonderful pins.

If you go into DL expecting what was on the lanyards in April (cheap-o pins that NO ONE wanted because the good stuff had been stripped by these 2 SCUMBAGS) and you get what is on them now, you will be PLEASANTLY surprised. If you go in there expecting WDW LE's on DL lanyards just because it's a Disney park...leave your lanyard in the room. The folks at DL did so much hard work to improve the situation for all of us and it's just really saddening to see people saying that there was no improvement. That's just not true.

 

[Goofster57]

I would have to agree with Peoplemover about the current conditions of the CM lanyards. I have traded more pins off CM lanyards in the last month since the new rules started than I had in the months before the change. I also feel that Becky and her team have really been putting an effort in trying to make it better for all collectors. You may not be able to find LE or Mystery pin on every CM lanyard, but you can still find good pins on almost everyone you see.

 

[kiffy]

My suggestion is to go to Imaginarium for lanyard hunting, near Autopia. No one goes there, and I have always found some very nice pins on lanyards!

 

[janelady]

And to prove that there is life on Disneyland/DCA lanyard trading, I got an Easter Tigger and an Easter Eeyore today. Great pins, LE of 2400. Also found a Tinker Bell on Spool!

So have a great time and make sure you share your success stories with us!

 

[tigger2esq]

for all the information and tips!! I am really looking forweard to the trip even though we will be in Disneyland for less than one day---it will be worth it!!!!

 

[SGKoss]

I was not very happy about some of the new rules about trading. I mean, how can the park sell a pin and not accept it for trade? That didn't seem fair. But, I would also like to say that some good stuff can be found on the lanyards every now and then. My sister-in-law decided on Sunday (mind you, the day of the LAST PIN of the NeverLand Mini Pin Set) that she not only would like to collect the whole set (she only had the teepee and now compass) but also decided she wanted the first set of mini-pins released. Well, wouldn't you know, we were able to get both sets for her, except of course for the D.

If anyone has it out there, let's chat.

Shari

 

[Luv2Roam]

The new DL pin trading rules also kept me from buying some of their own pins. I didn't buy any that were not tradable within their own park.

 

[JudithM]

I'm curious ... what kind of DL/DCA pin is not tradeable at DL/DCA? Thank you.

 

[peoplemover]

Most of the pins that are not acceptable now are from DCA. Here are some examples:

+ The "glossy" pins that are non-cloisonne, I think they are called enamel pins. This type of pin is just a painted picture with enamel or epoxy over the top of it. There is no gold or silver bordering around any of the images. (hope that makes sense) There were several done at DCA representing areas like Condor Flats, and one featuring produce. I have them both. Pins done in this style also include the Magical Moments poster pins from the Gallery stores. TONS of TDL pins are also epoxy covered and are not acceptable.

+ No pewter or brass or bronze pins. This includes the Animation sketch pins from DCA.

+ No frame pins like the Mother's Day DCA pin.

+ The DCA "fuzzy bear" pin is not tradeable.

+ The pins of the animals like the pelican and what not from DCA are not tradeable.

All of these categories are just what we were told by the super trader at DCA, they may have changed since I was there but he made it pretty clear over a period of about 5 days that those rules were finalized.

I think almost all of the pins that are non-tradeable are from DCA and they were being phased out when I left CA in May. They made very clear what pins were not tradeable when they made the changes in a brochure available at every pin station and by word of mouth, so there was no question in anyone's mind. We were told that the pins from the first 2 categories I named were being discontinued and phased out because they were not tradeable.

 

[JudithM]

Peoplemover, thanks for the reply. I sure hope WDW doesn't become as strict as DL. I like trading at WDW!