Pin trading is the ultimate rabbit hole of the Disney hobby world. Here’s a beginner’s guide to get your started with Disney pin trading. We especially recommend play around with the hidden mickey pins/ Once you start, you’ll find yourself hooked!
Introduction
Pin trading has actually evolved A LOT over the last few years. A couple of years ago, you would be more likely to see folks walking down Main Street U.S.A. wearing lanyards adorned with pins. Within the last year, it’s much more common to see folks with sling bags or even full on backpacks with huge displays of pin collections. It’s crazy! We feel like there are two really great things about pin trading. First, you can collect whatever you want to collect. If you like princesses, for example, you can collect only princess pins. I collect Elliott the dragon and The Rescuers pins while my wife collects Figment and Nana pins.
Second, pin trading turns what can be something super solitary (i.e. buying pins from the store) into a social experience. It’s more than just trading pin-for-pin, too. You might have 3 to 4 small pins and someone wants all of them for one bigger, cooler pin that fits your collection. Unlink other hobbies, this is one that gives you the opportunity to trade up.
Getting Started with Disney Pin Trading
To get started with pin trading, we recommend buying a lanyard in pin set at the resort shop, or in the first shop you come across in whatever park you’re visiting. These lanyard sets will include the lanyard and 4 to 6 pins. We also don’t recommend buying “pin lots” on eBay. Nearly all of these cheap (and they are REALLY cheap) pins are fake and nowhere near as high quality as what you can get in the parks. In the pin trading community, there’s been a lot of chatter about working to decrease the number of fake pins found on trading boards. If you want to wear and display the pins you love, we also recommend investing in some locking pin backs. You don’t want to lose your favorite pin on the ground outside the Haunted Mansion! As you start to trade, you’ll want to be mindful about designating which pins you’d like to keep and which you are your “currency,” or the ones you want to trade.
Where and How to Trade
There are opportunities to trade pins in a ton of places all around each of the Disney parks and resorts. Some of the best trading you can do will be with Cast Members. You can look to see if a Cast Member is wearing a lanyard with pin, or a little more common now is a hip square. These are small black squares worn on the hip and they hold 4 to 6 pins. Each Cast Member is allowed to trade 2 pins per guest per day. You’ll need to be strategic if you like a lot of their pins! You can also ask Cast Members if they have trivia. Many Cast Members will have a secret (sometimes really special) pin if you answer their trivia question correctly.
Apart from the Cast Members themselves, there are pin boards everywhere. You’ll find them at Guest Relations, in the entry-ways to many Table Service restaurants, and in the gift shops after certain rides. When trading from a board, the same 2-pin limit exists. 2 pins per person per day. Again though, if you’re concerned about fake pins, trade from the boards with caution. In the pin trading community, these are most commonly referred to as, “scrappers.” If you’d like to do your best to collect only authentic pins, we suggest reading up on how spot fake pins. Many members of the pin trading community have created similar resources in an effort to combat just how many fakes there are.
Pro-Tips and Etiquette
Hidden Mickeys
Each year, Disney releases 2 to 3 “waves” of hidden Mickey pins that are sold in blind bags. These are sets of pins that all have a silver Mickey icon somewhere on its design (or the Pixar ball if it’s a Pixar pin or the Rebel Alliance starbird if it’s a Star Wars pin). You can buy bags that contain two mystery pins in the gift stores, and then trade your duplicates for ones that you’re missing until you “catch-em-all.” When we went in November 2025, we were lucky enough to snag some Wave B bags. We got one chaser! For each set of 5 to 6, there’s the potential to find the rare chaser to complete your set. The hidden Mickey pins are exclusive to the Disney parks, so you can’t find them online or anywhere else. If you’re looking to engage with other traders around the parks and resorts, many people will definitely be looking to hidden Mickeys!
Lanyards vs. Bags
For our last trip, we transitioned from wearing pin lanyards to carrying Pinfolio boards. Since we trade A LOT, we found that the lanyards were getting a little too heavy and uncomfortable. After much resort, we went with the pin trading standard of miniboards that we kept in our park bags all day. This technology is really cool if you’re looking to get a little more intermediate to advance with pin trading. If you’re looking to get started though, we did love our time trading from our lanyards. They’re great for a small number of pins, and you get to show them off all day long.
The Story Behind the Pin
We started trading the same reason most people start trading; we wanted to collect these fun little souvenirs that would remind us of an amazing trip to Disney World. We’ve always loved the feeling that Disney World brings us. For instance, one of my favorite memories was finding this Mama Coco pin in Memento Mori literally hours after I told my wife that’d I’d really like a Mama Coco pin. Wild! Since then, we’ve evolved to collect pins specific to our collections. Disney is always turning out new pins that will fit right in. Consider diving into pin trading on your next visit to Disney World. Though, as I shared, once you start you won’t be able to stop!
