All About Disney Pin Trading

Everything You Need to Know About Disney Pin Trading!

Have you ever tried pin trading at Disneyland or any of the Disney resorts? It is becoming more popular now! My kids have so much fun with this little hobby. There are several ways you can pin trade, here are some of our tips for buying, trading, and displaying them!

Buying Pins- You can purchase pins at any of the Disney Resorts, they have fun blind bags now with different collections. We even bought some unique ones when we went to Aulani Resort in Hawaii.

Buying pins at the park can be expensive, with each pin starting at about $8 and up. If you plan ahead and buy pins before you go to the parks, the price is more reasonable. Another option is to buy them in bulk on Ebay or Amazon and they are about $1 per pin. Now some people might argue that if buying in bulk you risk not getting the authentic Disney pins, but our family personally just does this for fun, and we do not care so much about the authenticity. Sometimes the pins you find on Ebay are "scrapper" pins from Disney, where maybe the shade of one color is off just a bit, or there was an over production. Disney does allow cast members to trade scrapper pins. We buy a lot of our pins from Ebay and my kids pick out and keep the ones they like, and trade the ones they don't like.

That being said, if you are a hard-core pin trader or want to become one, you should know that most of the pins that you trade from Cast members are likely to be scrappers. Again, we don't care, we just do it for fun (as most families do)!

Trading Pins- For us the majority of pin trading comes from the cast members in the park and at almost ANY gift shop. All 3 Disney Hotels offer pin trading at the check in desks as well. If you don't see the pin stand out, you can ask a cast member at the register. Sometimes they have them hidden behind the desk and will bring them out upon request. Here is what the stands look like...

Buying pins in Bulk

World of Disney Store, Downtown Disney

Hidden Mickey= you can only get from trading a cast member

Pin Trading at Aulani

Displaying Pins- With the increasing popularity of pin trading, comes much more options to buy pin displays. We keep it low budget and made our own! We went to the dollar store and bought a canvas banner; Juliet painted it and organized all her pins by categories.

Another popular idea is to buy cork board and put it on a picture frame (we saw these at the dollar store too)! Disney stores also sell many kinds of lanyards so you can wear them at the parks. With so many different collections of pins, it is fun to search and add to whatever collections you are working on. As you can see below, Juliet's current collections are Disney dogs, Tsum Tsums, tea cups, food, and the black and white family on the bottom. Mike is a firefighter and likes Donald Duck, so he has a collection going of those. Jaxson likes Halloween and Jack Skellington pins.

You can make Disney pin trading extra special by buying pins related to special moments or trips. We have a set from our wedding, I have a limited edition Minnie nurse pin that was released during covid, and we have pins from Alauni and our Disney Cruise. Pin trading adds a little more magic to your next Disney trip! Do you have any special pins or collections? I would love to hear about it!

The benefit of trading with Cast Members is that they CANNOT say no! It is not their personal pins, so you can trade whatever you want, as long as they are Disney pins. There is usually a limit to 2 trades per person. Another neat thing is that cast members have exclusive pins that you can only get from trading, you cannot buy anywhere. You can know this by seeing a "hidden mickey" on the pins.

Most of the "professional" pin traders are trading their own pins that they purchased, so they will understandably be more selective to what they are willing to trade. You can find these people in Frontierland outside the "Westward Ho Trading Co." store

Even if you do not have a Disney park ticket you still have plenty of opportunity to trade! Downtown Disney has a stand called Pin Traders where you can buy and trade pins. Pin Traders is located across from the Lego store

When we went to Alauni, they had a designated time every day for an hour where you can trade pins with cast members outside the gift shop. I'm sure most of the hotels in Walt Disney World does this too.