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Could I Get Some Tips on Pin Collecting?
RangerLab
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
in Pinny Arcade
Hey, so I've been looking into pin collecting, and found Pinny Arcade, thought it might be interesting. My only problem is that I have no clue where to start ;-;
I am going to PAX East this year, and saw that there's trading events and such. My best guess is that I'd need a lanyard and buy some starter pins or something, but I wouldn't know where to go from there. Anything you guys could help me with would be great. Thanks
I am going to PAX East this year, and saw that there's trading events and such. My best guess is that I'd need a lanyard and buy some starter pins or something, but I wouldn't know where to go from there. Anything you guys could help me with would be great. Thanks
+1
Posts
I'd start by checking out the front page, Community Thread and Community Resource Hub.
https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/187709/pinny-pal-community-thread-2-0-please-read-the-first-post#latest
https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/200192/pinny-pals-community-resource-hub-podcast-chat-apps-and-useful-info#latest
"Damn fine pins!"
The simplest thing to do is buy a core set at your PAX of choice, so this year's East. There'll be a show-specific core set as well as a generic Penny Arcade core set, so that's 8 pins you've immediately started with. Congratulations!
From there, follow the Pin Quest that'll be posted on the PA website closer to East. There should be a list of pins that are available at that particular PAX, with their locations, and occasionally their prices. If not, you can find out the prices (or if the pins are 'time sinks', which means they're free but often take quite a while to get because everyone wants the free pin). If you don't want to buy anything, that's cool, go around and pick up some free pins. Now you have more pins, hooray!
Then you can get into trading. There'll be an Official Pinny Arcade Trading Session at East where you can trade with PA staff members, who will take any Pinny Arcade pin for anything on their table. That's where you can make some good finds, stuff from earlier PAXes or neat pins that others have traded away.
Example! The Magic the Gathering pins are generally time sink pins at every PAX. If you like Magic, but you don't want to spend time playing the game and getting a silly photo taken, you can wander through the Trading Session a couple of times and keep an eye on the tables. Someone may have gone through the process of getting the Magic pin and saw something they wanted even more, or convinced their friend to go through the torture of playing Magic really definitely enjoy playing Magic with them, so they got a spare pin. Then, you can trade a pin for that Magic pin. Awesome!
Now that you've got a little collection of East pins, you can sign up at Pinny Pals and display your collection for other people to be jealous of. And you can start making trades online. Say you want a pin from an Aus PAX, because it's a little too far away for you to get to this year. You could come to me with one of your East pins this year and say "hello @misskass, would you like to partake of my East pin for your Aus pin?", and I could say "YES ABSOLUTELY GIVE ME THE FOREIGN PINS". Then you'll have cool pins from a different country (or a different state), which is one of my favourite parts of collecting.
It's a process and a bit difficult to get your head around. The best way to get into it (if you can afford it) is just to buy a few of the sets from the PA store (like the Halloween and Christmas sets, or the New Years single pin THEN TRADE THE NEW YEARS ONE TO ME BECAUSE SHIPPING IS EXPENSIVE EVEN FOR ONE PIN HA HA HA HA) and take them along with you to the con. Then get the con-specific ones and get trading with people.
[/br]https://www.pinnypals.com/pals/misskass
Welcome to pin collecting!!
I went through this at pax in Australia in November.
Join PinnyPals
https://www.pinnypals.com/home
Before Pax East - buy some sets and pins from Pinny Arcade store. Hint: Buy 2 2016 New Year pins and trade one for other LE. Buy multiple christmas and enfu sets and trade. Buy 1 core set for a lanyard.
AT PAX EAST: If you have the money buy multiples of each set availble at Pax East plus the LE pin for Pax East. You can buy 2 LE's each day. If you get at least 4 Pax East sets and 4 LEs you can trade 3 away for each of the other Paxe's con sets/LEs. You also want 'fodder' for the staff trading event/staff trading and general trading. I would suggest grabbing as many sets as you can afford (there will be at least 1 non event set for sale). You can also buy pins as per the pin quest etc.
Ultimately it comes down to how you want to collect: Just certain pins / Paxes or everything. Above all have fun with it.
Your best bet is going to be to load up on as many free pins as you possible can
Other than that, an investment in to the LE pin at the PAX and the core PAX sets is never going to go astray.
Personally I'd say avoid the Core 2.0 set, you get 1 for your collection if you want but otherwise, the PAX core set is always going to be a better use of your money.
The most important thing is patience, everything readily available now, won't be in the future and there's always new collectors (like yourself) who are going to want older pins
http://pinmash.info - Head-To-Head battle of pins! Choose the most desirable.
http://pinnywise.com - iOS pin collection tracking app.
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My Delicious Pins For Trade
They sell out fast but they're $14 for two pins which makes them a better value than the generic core sets (which work out to $7.50 for each pin). You get two random-ish pins so while a lot may not be that interesting, you can get some nice rares if you're lucky. This can help fill out your collection and provide you with great stuff for trading.
If you're like me and have a HUGE set of pins you'd like, they can be great -- while the veterans are complaining about their ten thousandth Lookout pin, I'm still trying to complete that set so I'm happy to get them.
We just had 400 go on sale last week so it may be a little while until the next batch, but if you keep your eyes peeled they'll come back around.
Thanks again, I'm so excited to start collecting and trading!
https://www.penny-arcade.com/pinny-arcade/rules
Also @misskass and the other knocked it out of the park, get yourself a tidy little bunch at East to start out and then trade from there! That's exactly how I got started at East 2014, so you picked a good place to get going.
And as always, feel free to keep asking questions! This community is filled with some of the kindest and most helpful people I know so it's a pretty rad resource. And if you find yourself wanting to get more involved in the community the forum is a great place to start chatting everyone up, plus we have two chat apps (mentioned in the Resource Thread) where we gather up and shoot the shit 24/7.
Welcome to the Pinny Pals!
There are generally 2 pin scenarios:
1) Pins are completely gone well before the closing of the convention center on the last day.
2) Pins are not completely gone, and will be available for purchase online at a later date.
As far as other "loot", it runs the gamut. Some booths will hand you stuff if you ask nicely, some will tell you to piss off, and your average booth will have an "end of the day raffle" for stuff (posters, graphics cards, chairs, figures, etc.).
2015 PAX Prime Omeganaut (I will forever hate Katamari)
What is your Pin Budget for the year?
Are you going to collect just the pins you like, or every single Penny Arcade pin ever made?
2015 PAX Prime Omeganaut (I will forever hate Katamari)
I'd generally like to collect pins I like, at least for now. I don't quite have a set budget yet, though I don't want to go overboard. I was planning on bringing ~$100 for merch and maybe $25 - $50 for pins (I would rather just go with the free ones but I'm sure I'll find some I want), but I'm not quite sure if it's enough.
Ah, alright. Sounds good, I'm an aspiring game designer, so I've been wanting to find some board games I can learn from.
Not sure why I answered those out of order, lol.
Doubly so because you are guaranteed to be in a line with lots of people into trading pins.
In all seriousness welcome, its an awesome hobby.
My Pin Lanyard
It's hard to say how many people collect pins, but companies typically produce anywhere from 1000 to 5000 pins for a given PAX, depending on the size of the company/popularity of the game. Pins are a great way to attract people to your booth.