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I was not ready for Pinny Arcade(long)
status253
puyallupRegistered User regular
puyallupRegistered User regular
I am a father of two sons, 8 and 11. My wife and I make a moderate income. We can pay the mortgage and bills on time, and have a little extra put to the side for things like PAX. So when they started to expand PAX to Boston and Australia, I knew I would never be able to attend those. I wasn't mad though, because the people in the same situation as us would finally be able to go and enjoy a PAX. Then they announced Pinny-Arcade. Now while I loved the pins and the whole idea surrounding it, they seemed a little bit out of my price range. I wrote them off, not hating on them but just deciding they weren't for me. Thinking the free pins from the booths were cool but I would never be able to find any one like Gabe or Tycho to trade with. Then fate stepped in and thought different. Penny-Arcade announced a Lookouts set.
I'm a big fan of the Lookouts comic. Every few months a new copy would be up for download on comixology. A few bucks for a digital comic every few months was perfect for me. I get a little extra money and I scoop up the shirt from the PA store. Now I see the Lookouts pin set. I set aside money for this set the minute I saw it. I knew I would be buying it but I didn't want to trade it. I just wanted to have that set. Now my brother, wife and I were some of the lucky PAX attendees who got a Sunday and Monday badge. The first thing I do is check the PA merch booth. I had to contain my self from just yelling and jumping around. Scooped it up and after some encouragement from my wife I put then my lanyard for everyone to see. Knowing I didn't want to trade I had to turn down some offers. It seemed like everyone wanted the logo. But that by far was my favorite pin. Then I started to see other pins that I would want, but I wasn't willing to break the set up. Time to go look for some of the free ones.
With hope low I went to the MTG booth. I had been here in prior PAX shows "nope sorry we are out of swag." Not this time, fate once again intervenes. They still had some. So my brother and I get in line to play the demo, while the wife walks the expo. We finish the demo and each get a pin, my brother not into it all gives me his pin. Knowing the rules that you can only trade official pins for official pins this kind of sparked some excitement. We hook back up with my wife and I let her know I have two to trade now, and she replies I just seen on twitter they are going to be trading pins at Benaroya in a half an hour.
Benaroya starts off unorganized but I'm only a few feet away from Jerry and Mike. I feel really good about my chances of getting a zombie pin and a cts pin. Someone finally takes leads and forms us into a line, sending me farther back away from my goal. Allot of the traders around me wanted the other PA staff that were there at the time. So my hope was still there that I would be able to get my two I want, because I was not breaking up my Lookouts set. Trader after Trader go, I think to my self maybe I should chew on my nails so my outside actions match my inside feelings. Then its my turn. Mikes asks "You looking for CTS?" "Yes here is a Elspeth mint in package." Continue on and get my Zombie from Jerry, and quickly duck out of the line. I didn't even make eye contact with the other PA staff in hopes of not offending them. I had no other pins to trade I was content with what I had. Fate was not content with it though.
On the walk back to the WSCC it finally hits me. I just traded with the guys who created PAX. I had my picture taking with them, wait did I? My wife "yes, I will send you the pics." This ranks in the top ten of most awesome things I have done to date. So I get back and it becomes all about the pins. I wait in line, play this game, watch that game demo, spin that wheel. I even changed over currency to get some pins. I don't know the exchange rate but 5 bucks for 300 yen. If I get a pin sure! I didn't get them all, and I couldn't buy all the sets they had for sale. But wow am I hooked! The vendors did an awesome job making sure they had pins for all four days of PAX. Traders were great and friendly. It made for one of the best PAX weekends ever. BTW if you live in the Puyallup area and want to trade let me know. Thank you if you read this post. I know its way to long, but I'm way to excited!
I'm a big fan of the Lookouts comic. Every few months a new copy would be up for download on comixology. A few bucks for a digital comic every few months was perfect for me. I get a little extra money and I scoop up the shirt from the PA store. Now I see the Lookouts pin set. I set aside money for this set the minute I saw it. I knew I would be buying it but I didn't want to trade it. I just wanted to have that set. Now my brother, wife and I were some of the lucky PAX attendees who got a Sunday and Monday badge. The first thing I do is check the PA merch booth. I had to contain my self from just yelling and jumping around. Scooped it up and after some encouragement from my wife I put then my lanyard for everyone to see. Knowing I didn't want to trade I had to turn down some offers. It seemed like everyone wanted the logo. But that by far was my favorite pin. Then I started to see other pins that I would want, but I wasn't willing to break the set up. Time to go look for some of the free ones.
With hope low I went to the MTG booth. I had been here in prior PAX shows "nope sorry we are out of swag." Not this time, fate once again intervenes. They still had some. So my brother and I get in line to play the demo, while the wife walks the expo. We finish the demo and each get a pin, my brother not into it all gives me his pin. Knowing the rules that you can only trade official pins for official pins this kind of sparked some excitement. We hook back up with my wife and I let her know I have two to trade now, and she replies I just seen on twitter they are going to be trading pins at Benaroya in a half an hour.
Benaroya starts off unorganized but I'm only a few feet away from Jerry and Mike. I feel really good about my chances of getting a zombie pin and a cts pin. Someone finally takes leads and forms us into a line, sending me farther back away from my goal. Allot of the traders around me wanted the other PA staff that were there at the time. So my hope was still there that I would be able to get my two I want, because I was not breaking up my Lookouts set. Trader after Trader go, I think to my self maybe I should chew on my nails so my outside actions match my inside feelings. Then its my turn. Mikes asks "You looking for CTS?" "Yes here is a Elspeth mint in package." Continue on and get my Zombie from Jerry, and quickly duck out of the line. I didn't even make eye contact with the other PA staff in hopes of not offending them. I had no other pins to trade I was content with what I had. Fate was not content with it though.
On the walk back to the WSCC it finally hits me. I just traded with the guys who created PAX. I had my picture taking with them, wait did I? My wife "yes, I will send you the pics." This ranks in the top ten of most awesome things I have done to date. So I get back and it becomes all about the pins. I wait in line, play this game, watch that game demo, spin that wheel. I even changed over currency to get some pins. I don't know the exchange rate but 5 bucks for 300 yen. If I get a pin sure! I didn't get them all, and I couldn't buy all the sets they had for sale. But wow am I hooked! The vendors did an awesome job making sure they had pins for all four days of PAX. Traders were great and friendly. It made for one of the best PAX weekends ever. BTW if you live in the Puyallup area and want to trade let me know. Thank you if you read this post. I know its way to long, but I'm way to excited!
+9
Posts
@ bloatedhippo Yeah the pins are really cool. Which one is your favorite?
Once you start buying/trading and collecting, it becomes so addicting and hard not to want to collect everything, so I wish you luck in finding people to trade with. Why don't you head over to the Pinny Arcade Trading forum post? We have a bunch of people looking to team up for future PAX's this way everyone can get everything! Link is below:
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/177186/pax-pinny-arcade-discussion-and-trading-thread/p17
My Digital Pin Lanyard
Probably spent way too much on pins, and I'll need to make some "off season" trades to get some AUS/East stuff if I can, but digressions aside the pins made me feel more connected with other con-goers than either of my two previous years.
It helped me meet a lot of new people too. It's way easier to strike up a conversation with "Hey, are the pins on your lanyard up for trade?" than "Hey random dude, want to chat/play game?" A fun little ice breaker, that frequently ends with both parties stepping away with new pins, or at the very least some casual discussion about what they're looking for.
Pinny Arcade definitely absorbed me into it's meta-game a little more than I expected.
You might then ask, well what do you do with 5 Infamous pins when they are so easy to get and everyone else has them too? Who would trade for those!? Well. You trade them for faces. You could trade any Pinny pin for a staff face. Then trade the staff faces for other ones you wanted.
At the end of the day Monday myself and two friends were trying to get a few more pins and in the last 2 hours of the show I managed to trade about 6 Infamous, 6 Magic, 3 Bethesda sets and about 6 more Jin's away. Got a complete Core set, some of the Prime set, Rayman pins, Behemoth pins. Was a blast and was even more exciting for me since I put nothing into it financially.
BTW... The info desk was doing a free pin for pin exchange at the end of the show. Walk up and give any Pinny Pin in exchange for any other one they had set out on the counter. There was a TON of lookout pins and then you would see core/prime sets and Behemoth pins come and go.
Ack, I wish I knew that then. I had several spares and was looking to rebuild a core set.
I spent a little bit of time there on the last day, I wish I grabbed spares of some other freebie pins, but oh well you live and learn I guess. I'll slowly get better at this Pinny Arcade thing... like not trading away 75% of your only PAX East set.
Trade me pins! - https://pinnypals.com/pals/TheAggroCraig
To clarify what that was, we were really trading for Kristin Lindsay, one of the staffers. We had her face pin availible for one to one trades, and the pins traded to her were also then availible.
While this exact situation may not always be there. It is probably a fair bet that Info Booth will always have pin traders nearby (or on staff) and would be happy to trade assuming they aren't slammed with other questions.