How to use this blog

For the most part this blog will be very dull reading for most people.  Most blog posts, will simply be a link to an image and a listing of the pins that appear in those images.  Not what most people are looking for, but it needs to be done to build the inventory.

This blog will not be splashy and full of pictures.  I'm limited by what Blogger can do, what I know how to do in Blogger, and the fact that I don't own any of the original images.  I am located about 1000 miles from Disneyland, and 1850 miles from Walt Disney World, so I also can't easily build a database of photos of the bad pins found in circulation.

I expect people will be able to use this blog in a couple ways.

First, on the top right side of the page is a search box.  Simply, enter a Pinpics number into that box and if the pin appears in an image it will return results showing which blog posts the pin is listed.  This will then allow you to click through to where the image appears, and verify with your own eyes that a specific pin has been offered.

While I've been doing  my blog cleanup I've found out that for some reason some numbers aren't searchable.  It's only affecting maybe a dozen of the pins I've been searching for, so most pins should still work.  I'm trying to figure out the problem.

Secondly, across the top of this blog are links to pages that list which pins appear, broken down into type.  Hopefully, these links will give people a better idea which types of pins appear most frequently, and how concerned they should be about their own collections.  By far, the majority of pins that appear are Cast Lanyard / Hidden Mickey pins.  Followed by booster/mini pin sets.  If you collect that type of pin, you already know the risks.  But for newer collectors, who are wondering about their random LE pin... Maybe, they can feel more confident that the issue they find is more likely a production flaw and not a "Chinese Factory selling pins" issue.

Unfortunately, recent Ebay sales indicate an increase of better quality pins that appear to be either actual Disney scrap (especially for pins either just released by Disney or pins released before Disney) or high quality counterfeits (older Disney Shopping.com pins).  I'm not sure how this changes things.  

As always, the lack of a specific pin appearing on this site does not mean the pin has not been compromised. Just that I have not found it in an image yet.

Lastly for those anal types like me, there will be a complete master list of pins. I don't really recommend printing this.  I've created a Word document with the original images, and a listing of the pins. It's currently at 196 pages.  Basically, a whole book.  But I know some people like to have that information in whole.

I'm still working on a way to list the complete list without killing Blogger.  I think I will end up loading a document through a file sharing program somewhere and linking to it.  First, I'll see if Google Docs can do it.