Fascinating! Thank you!
Thanks for the article. I was interested in the comment about fakes not being declined. Our most ambitious pin trading was from about 2001 to 2008. My memory is that I first ordered some pins from Amazon some of which were rejected by CMs. I thought they were right to reject the fakes. I looked for and found a private seller which I used prior to subsequent trips. Our extended family were not interested in having large collections. Everyone had their favorite character or movie that they looked for. From 2010 on most family only traded a couple of pins per trip if they saw a pin new to them. The fun was in having 5 or 6 new to them pins each trip to use as traders for that villain or different Stitch that they were really after.
Most of our pin traders have moved on from visiting Disney but some still cherish their pins. They’re much more mobile than some Disney memorabilia. And longer lasting. 
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It seems like things may be moving back that way. Maybe the pin boards could still be an option for fakes, but they shouldn’t force cast members to accept fakes for their lanyards.
Ideally the cast members at the boards will be knowledgeable about this issue, but that might be unrealistic. I’d love to see a way to pull more fakes out of circulation while still letting kids have fun with it. Maybe set up a “8 fakes for a real one” option, then they discreetly trash the fakes.
Not a huge pressing issue like DAS but there’s room for improvement. Most pin boards seem to have mostly the same types of pins. The work around we saw last trip was a knowledgeable cast member pulling out a hidden stash when he saw a kid wanting to trade a real pin.
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From comments I have heard from the pin trading community, fakes were declined much more frequently in the earlier years. By the time I started in 2015, that no longer seemed the case. My first batch of pins were definitely fakes.
There are people who do. But these include the limited edition pins (250-300 made total). There are many cast memeber exclusive opportunities and pin types - Disney Employee Center (DEC pins) Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI pins) and then also limited edition ones sold at the Disney Studio Store in Holllywood and D23 (last two open to the public)Those can be bought for $20-$30 and flipped for, occasionally, hundreds of dollars. The big pin sellers have the full range and have invested a lot.
But the hidden Mickey’s found only.on cast boards and lanyatd can be sold for $7-$20!
This is my board of my favorite pins - some.of them are quite large and wouldn’t fit on a lanyard! (You’ll notice a theme).
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Fancy borders?
I have a pin from something Disney used to have - like Magic Kingdom Club maybe ? - that says Day One. Disney sent it to me. I attached it to a plastic desk organizer and occasionally I’ve thought about pitching the pin.
Exactly 
That’s mostly a tell tale sign of DEC pins…
I thought you would appreciate the wicked step mother.
Don’t do that without consilting me! I’ll do some research.
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I know someone who’d love a pin like that. 
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I love pin trading. I don’t have a huge collection but just keep what I like. I always buy pins for each special event we attend. The only exception is that last year we went for flower and garden and there were no pins left at Epcot with the date – only the passholder pins. Ebay was full of them but I refused to pay twice the price. So no Figment 2023 for me.
I have two sets of the epcot icons pins – one is real, one is fake. I traded for all of them at the parks. I mean, I don’t really know the difference but one set has solid, flat enamel, and the other set (that I think is the fakes) the enamel is like concave.
I don’t really care if the pins I trade for are real or fake if I like them.
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That’s a lovely sentiment. I confess, this thread – which I started, so I must be a bit of a masochist! – has made me re-think some pins in my tiny collection. I bought pins and never traded, but there were several Tink pins that I coveted 'way back in the 2000-2004 time period. There was a particular pin that was kind of a standard, and for a while in 2000 or 2001, several error pins were accidentally released into the parks. I bought a few off eBay.
Then yesterday, I read that article about how to tell a real Disney pin or a fake, and I remembered those error pins… Are they real? Are they fakes? And I just was so ignorant back then, I never stopped to consider it?
I’ll have to remember to check my collection for telltale sloppy enamel, because the “error” is that one of the lower loops of Tink’s wing is colored green instead of yellow. So the coloring is already off. Looking at the back won’t be much help – the backs of the pins back then were pretty bland and easy to copy.
But I love my Tink pins, and if they turn out to be fake… well, then, OK, I’ve got some fakes.
Oh! Trying to find an image of the pin I’m referring to sent me down a bunny trail! And I found another Tink pin which I own from that era, and its original 2001 price tag says $6.50!!! Oh! Oh! Oh! How I wish that were still the price for pins!!! I would be a lot more inclined to start trading if they were!
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Here’s my pin board. I also have some on a lanyard. But these are the favorites. My real/fake Epcots are at the bottom.
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I have a story about the stormtrooper pin (the sugar skull one). It was my daughter’s birthday and she was 9 I think. It was early May. She was dressed as Belle and we had reservations at the Beauty and the Beast castle for breakfast so we could get early entry. She was so excited. But it was pouring. We bought ponchos and put them on but it was just yucky. I was in a bad mood because I wanted to take pictures of her in front of the castle before it got busy. Well since it was raining we decided not to rush to the castle. We were walking down Main Street and a CM was standing there and she had the stormtrooper pin on her bag thing. I asked if I could trade and told her I had really been wanting that pin and she was happy to choose one of mine.
At that moment, it stopped raining. The sun came out. We ran to the castle and the ground was all wet and reflective and I got the most beautiful pictures of my kid twirling around in that poofy dress - pure bliss.
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I read that you can also sometimes tell based on the “hidden” Mickey on the front. The fakes can sometimes be more of a blob, while the real ones have a well defined shape.
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I bought real pins for my kids to trade last trip. They traded some for some real obvious fakes. But they Loved them and they are their favorites!! so I don’t really care. But I would like to know how CMs are handling it. I can make sure they give one of our new real ones.
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This sounds like a womderful morning! Disney magic.
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Interestingly, from what I understand, fakes are a newer phenomenon (like last 15 years or so). Before that there were “scrappers” - pins that didn’t pass quality control, but instead of going into the trash, they fell off the back of a truck.
For a circa 2000 pin it is probably not fake even if it has quality issues. I LOVE some.of those older pins.
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I recall this term - scrapper.
Oh, my gah! I’m not crying; you’re crying!!! 
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I know, right?!
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