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Once Upon A Pin Trading
By Roberta - October 14, 2001
Once upon a time there was a magical place called Disney World. One day someone had this idea about marketing pins. The hope was (besides making money) that total strangers would talk to each other while they were at the parks as they exchanged pins. The people at this
magical place wanted to try it out before events started to celebrate the millennium. So in September of 1999 the first of the trading pins
appeared.
There were very few places in the parks to buy them and none of us had enough to put in a display book. We all wore them on our lanyards
and, just as they had hoped, everyone came up to everyone else to talk and exchange pins. It was new but even better, it was innocent.
By December of 1999 things had gotten a lot more organized. Now there were pin trading stations. The first of the hard core traders had
appeared.
By May of 2000 these professional pin people were looking down their noses at the casual collector. What had gone wrong? Why wasn't it as
much fun any more?
By September of 2000 I had given up trading and now only bought pins that meant something to me.
By September of 2001 I only made one pin trade. A young boy, obviously severely handicapped, and his parents showed up at the
EPCOT pin station. I went over to talk to them and offered him one of my 2000 light up pins. His Mom tearfully thanked me. Then, for the
first time in two years, I had the feelings that happened when all this first started.
It's not about the pins you have but what you do with them. The only way to recapture the innocence is to have it start with you.
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