Limited edition pins can be quite valuable.  But just because a pin isn't called Limited Edition doesn't mean it isn't.  Confused?  Let me explain...

This is one of those little secrets Disney doesn't want to tell.  For them, people's ignorance about Limited Edition pins is a great selling tool.  But to the informed, it can open the door to finding some real treasures.

When a pin is officially listed as limited edition, it means that Disney has fully intended to make only a certain number of pins, and that's the total number they make.  Many times, they will print the edition size on the back.  This means - especially on framed sets - Disney has been able to charge $20 and even $30 a pin for certain pins because they are limited in edition size to a couple hundred.

Now Disney has every right to do this...but did you know that there are other Disney pins out there that are far rarer than LE1000 - or LE500 or even less - that aren't listed as Limited Edition?  Let me give an example.  Each year, Disney holds the Festival of the Masters event.  The 1999 Festival of the Masters 24th Annual pin (featuring Picasso Mickey) was limited in edition size to 300.  It's a highly-sought pin and very cool.

But the year before, the Festival of the Masters 23rd Annual Cubed Mickey was made and it isn't listed on the back as a Limited Edition pin...but because 1998 was the first year the Walt Disney World festival offered a pin, they didn't know how popular the pin would be and didn't make many.  According to PinPics, this pin had only 140 made!

Because pin trading wasn't that big a thing back in 1998, it took weeks for this rare pin to sell out.  But now that it has sold out, it's become a very rare pin.  The point is, the non-Limited Edition Cubist pin is rarer than the Limited Edition Picasso pin.  This story is repeated multiple times...so how do you discover what's rare and what's not?  (In a moment...)

A more recent example is Jerry Leigh pins.  (Jerry Leigh is an officially-licensed pin seller who creates Disney pins that are sold not in the parks in Florida, but in souvenir shops in the Orlando area.)  At first glance, you might think that these are going to be "junk" pins, as none of them are marked as Limited Edition.  But because this is a new endeavor for Jerry Leigh, many of the early pin designs were created in low edition sizes (meaning, they didn't make that many of them because they didn't know if they were going to sell or not).  Apparently, some of the pins were not re-ordered - such as the Chip and Dale Hawaii Series pin - so the original order size became their unofficial total edition size...Pinpics now states that only 432 of these chipmunk pins were made.

Pre-Millennium Pins

People tend to forget now new the Disney pin collecting rage is...it only really took off in late 1999 when the Walt Disney Company first started pushing the idea of pin trading with Cast Members.

Before that time, pins were sold in the parks but were not a huge mainstay of the business.  Consequently, pre-1999 pins - even though many of them are not listed as Limited Edition - have very low edition sizes.  I'm sure the Disney Company keeps records of such things, but it's certainly not widely known to the pin trading community.  Although some of these pins are considered "common" because the pin trading community hasn't caught on to the fact of their scarcity, a few have become extremely sought-after.  One such example is the 1980s "Disneyland Haunted Mansion with Mickey" pin.

This particular pin has reached "Holy Grail" status, and the last time I saw it on eBay (when I listed it for sale), it fetched over $600. 

My personal opinion is that these type of pins - the ones from the 1980s and earlier - are the ones that will ultimately fetch historical prices on the market.  Monogram Products - which had licensing rights to market Disney pins in the mid- to late 1980s - is an example of a company that has been long overlooked for its offerings to Disney park history.  They issued cloisonne', enamel and plastic pins that filled the parks in the '80s, but only now are people discovering their value.

Things to Consider in Edition Size

Even if edition size is not listed, being a detective may yield you some phenomenal discoveries.

• When was the pin issued and under what circumstances?  Some of the latter-issued Disney Auction pins are a good example.  In the final days of Disney Auctions, LE 100 pins were selling for slightly more than regular Open Stock pins.  The popularity simply died out for these pins.  Right now, there seems to be low demand for such pins, but a few years from now (when memories fade), I predict that these pins will be worth quite a bit, simply because there's only 100 of them.
• Who's the Character?  I don't care if there's only 10 pins made of some characters, they're simply not going to be sought-after because no one cares about them.  Characters from Treasure Planet and Narnia are two examples: Both of these films are excellent, but the characters for some reason never caught on when it came to pin collecting.
• If the pin is dated for a specific use (Father's Day 1999, Disneyana 1997, etc.), there is a good chance that although the pin isn't specifically listed as limited edition, the edition size is probably pretty low.
• Where were the pins marketed?  If issued for a new market, there's a good chance not many of the pins were originally issued (because of the start-up cost for such endeavors).
• Is the pin delicate?  The Open Stock Disneyland Character of the Month series from 2000 is one example.

  The frame fronts kept falling off, so although the pins were originally created to be marketed for an extended time, the word is that no pins were re-ordered...so the initial 2000 pins created became the full edition size, even though it was not listed as Limited Edition.

• Do the Research - Pin sites such as PinPics are great sources for history and news about pins.  I once sold a pair of pins for about $20 a piece.  Had I done the research, I would have realized that they were extremely rare Club 33 pins that - a few months later - commanded a price over 10 times that amount on eBay.  A costly but effective lesson learned by me.

Ultimately, the free marketplace of eBay will determine the value of pins, and purchasing pins strictly as an investment can be extremely risky (can we say, "Beanie Baby"?). But in the short-term, a collector can find some really rare pins at low edition sizes if they do their homework.

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