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Where do they make the pins?

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Where do they make the pins?
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Are all disney pins made overseas? I only have a few Mine are. Did they ever make American made Pins?
 
From our understanding, their has never been a Disney Pin made in the United States. The older pins, if marked, will say Japan but, our understanding is they never made a pin in the USA. If you get technical, Pro Pins and Sedesma's were made in Germany and Spain and they were some of the first "Disney" Pins created in numbers. Even the Coca Cola 15th Anniversary Pins are made in Taiwan, they were some of the first pins put out in mass.
 
I thought it was China that did the bulk of them. That is why they have the problems they do with scrappers, seconds, etc, as sometimes molds are not destroyed as ordered, ones deemed low quality by Disney are not destroyed, etc, and the problems occur. If they changed companies where they had greater control, scrappers, etc would certainly decrease, but the cost of the pins might increase.
 
Nope, ProPins and Sedesma Pins are made in Germany and Spain respectivly. The newer pins, Yes, are made in China. Hence the Scrapper Pandemic as it is today... If you notice the ProPins and Sedesma Pins aren't the pins that are scrapped because they are Cloisone vs. Pressed Pins like the majority of the new pins are.
 
Ok, PinsUSA!! They are both a distributor AND a manufacturer, HOWEVER, Disney uses China Factory's for their Manufacturing due to sure issue size. PinsUSA does manufacture but in small numbers. Nothing like the thousands and thousands ordered by Disney. Please understand I'm no expert in this issue. PinsUSA makes more "Private" runs of pins in their factory's in the USA. So more like for individual business that want a pin for an event or for advertising something special. I don't believe they have the facilities to make the thousands that Disney requires...
 
Also, Disney has made a few pins recently in the US. They were the marcasites at $100+ a pin but still they have made some pins in the USA.
 
^yup, the Marcasite LE 50 pins were all made in the USA and .999 (?) sterling silver. I can't think of any other Disney product not made in China, sadly.

The framing on the pin sets (at least DLRs) is done by a company in Fullerton. WDI uses a company in Glendale, as does Disney Shopping.
 
disUSCney said:
^yup, the Marcasite LE 50 pins were all made in the USA and .999 (?) sterling silver. I can't think of any other Disney product not made in China, sadly.

The framing on the pin sets (at least DLRs) is done by a company in Fullerton. WDI uses a company in Glendale, as does Disney Shopping.
Click to expand...

Picture This Framing is the company that Disney uses in Fullerton, also the same one I use to get anything framed. I love all the stuff they have hanging up. Amazing stuff there. I do believe that they don't do much of the framing for Disneyland for pin sets. A few special ones here and there (the $800-1100 pin sets come to mind) and a few releases with larger numbers but most framed pin sets are are done by Pin USA in Glendale.
 
We have the Marcasite WDW Pin and yes it does say Disney USA LE 50 on the back, but the black box it came in says box made in China. Kina a funny note and those pins weren't $100, they were $150. But, as mentioned they are silver. I have heard scuttle about giving some pin contracts to US Pin Makers. We're thinking maybe this is why Disney has been less than compasionate for pin collectors as of late. One can only hope things turn around as we live in not an epidemic, but a Pandemic of Scrapper Pins. And, granted, Disney uses USA Framing Company's, But the pins going into those frames come directly from China.
 
Most marcasites were $150 however, the one from the Disney Dream (I don't recall 100% if that was made in the US or not off the top of my head) was $95, I rounded up to $100 so put $100+.
 
Sirsnoozit said:
Nope, ProPins and Sedesma Pins are made in Germany and Spain respectivly. The newer pins, Yes, are made in China. Hence the Scrapper Pandemic as it is today... If you notice the ProPins and Sedesma Pins aren't the pins that are scrapped because they are Cloisone vs. Pressed Pins like the majority of the new pins are.
Click to expand...

Actually Propins and Sedesama pins are not "scrapped' because they are almost universally held in low reguard by collectors. The quality on many of those pins is actually below some of the better made scrapper pins.
 
Sirsnoozit said:
If you notice the ProPins and Sedesma Pins aren't the pins that are scrapped because they are Cloisone vs. Pressed Pins like the majority of the new pins are.
Click to expand...

Actually, I believe real cloisonne is more costly to make. From everything I have seen, I do not think I have ever run into a real cloisonne scrapper -they are too expensive. I have been advocating going back to real closionne for years! They are wonderful pins!
 
This is amazing information - Now I have to figure out what is the difference with all the Pins before I trade/buy them.
 
JKrolak said:
Actually Propins and Sedesama pins are not "scrapped' because they are almost universally held in low reguard by collectors. The quality on many of those pins is actually below some of the better made scrapper pins.
Click to expand...

That depends on when you started collecting. This same topic and same quote was thrown at me from another Forum. So, we went back through our pictures and video's. We noticed, in 2002, CM'S starting to wear Lanyards, they were all black Lanyards. We have friends who are CM'S so we just happened to take a few pictures of them with their lanyards on. We were suprised to see the majority of pins that they had on their Lanyards were ProPins and Sedesma Pins. The only "Disney" Pins we noticed, in those early photo's, were the first series CL'S. They stood out like sore thumbs because of the Gold Backs. And, please realize, because they are Cloisone Pins or poured metal, you can't get certain colors like their are in the new Disney Pins. It's not because they are held in "Low" regard by collectors. Depends upon who you talk too, I've made better trades with my old ProPins and Sedesma's than I ever have with a Disney Rack Pin. PLUS, if you collect obscure characters, you can't beat Pro or Sedesma. They put out Characters Disney doesn't cover very well.
 
I love Propins pins, from Germany. They also made a lot of unique designs before Disney parks made them. They are a slightly higher quality than Sedesma which also have some very cool pins that Disney themselves never made ie Donald holding a Banana lol.

Anyway, some traders think these pins are junk when they are little works of art on their own. JMHO.
 
Well..just to clarify -there are good Propins and bad Propins. Propins were legit pins and yes, Bellecat they made designs that were never done again. Propin used to make 9 pin boxed sets for characters (ie Pinpics 9387, 9392, 9397, etc.)

There were counterfeits made however that read: Propin. Those were those stupid looking I love you Mickeys (Pinpice 1506), and other bad designs (7794, 23058,19545). Which really hurt the Propin name. Propin stopped making Disney pins in/around 2000 -and that is when pin trading started, and when the bad ones started showing up -thus leaving them with a bad reputation.
 
Just as a point of reference - even if the pin manufacturing was move to the USA, that would NOT alleviate the scrapping problem. My father-in-law is a coin dealer, and coins (some worth as few as $5) are being duplicated en masse, and even well enough to fool some of the top coin dealers in the United States. There was a recent coin show in Orlando where a dealer used several independant authentications groups to confirm a coin was real before paying over $20,000 for it, only to realize later that it wasn't real.

If you are shady enough (I am not) you can send almost anything to the right person overseas, and they can replicate it fairly well. I am actuall suprised that the quality of the scrappers are still low. Obviously, if people would stop buying the crap on ebay because of the low quality, the frauds would spend the few extra pennies to come up with a better product.
 
^^^
So true. There are factories in China just waiting for customers to give them something to make, no questions asked about what the product is or what the intentions of the customer are. My better half's hobby is making traditional handcrafts like straw mobiles. At one point mbh made some traditional designs from recycled ingredients like used plastic straws. When we were selling them on some handcraft market, a Chinese woman came to us, gave her calling card and said that if we ever wanted to make thousands of them she could arrange it.

She held some kind of office in Finland as was talking about legal mass production. We politely thanked her and explained it was rather a moot point to suggest making an industry of handcrafts produced from industrial waste. But it got me thinking about the huge resources of Chinese state driven economy combined with cheap labor and what it could do.
 
I understand most or all of the pins are made in China. But I am curious to find out if there are any pin manufacturers left in US. Not necessarily for disney pins, but for highschool pins, commemorative items etc.

A while back when we were having our first TX pin meeting, I toyed with the idea of getting a TX shaped pin for attendees (which was hardly a handful anyway) and could not find anyone in US.

Now my daughter's school is considering getting pins made for a fundraiser and I want to have the correct info before putting my nose in there.
 
As far as I was aware, the vast majority if not all of them are made in china, this is why there are such a lot of scrappers on the market, because the plates that are used to make the original pins are stolen and used, or duplicated and used in factories by people wanting to make a few ££ on the side...
 
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