Collecting and Trading Baseball Pins

Along with virtually every sport in the world baseball has its share of collectors. Fans of the game who collect memorabilia. The type of thing they collect varies widely, from autographed baseballs to ticket stubs, you name it and there's probably someone somewhere who collects it and has a fine collection which they display with pride.

One item which is widely collected by baseball fans is the pin, once these pins were traded by coaches and players, nowadays it seems every little league team can have their own custom pin produced for them at very low cost. That means there's a whole world of baseball pins to trade and collect.

Theses pins come in a bewildering variety of styles, with an equally bewildering range of descriptive terms. Danglers, sliders, bobble heads, spinners, blinkies. It can certainly be confusing if you're not a pin collector or trader.

Danglers are basically a pin with a smaller pin attached to it with jump rings so the smaller pin literally "dangles" beneath the larger pin. Sliders are created by forming the larger pin with a hole or slot cut out of it and the smaller pin is fixed through the slot so it does in fact slide across the front of the larger pin.

Bobble head pins are once again a two part pin. The larger pin is often designed as the body of a baseball player and the smaller part of the pin is designed as the head of the player and attached to the larger pin with a spring so that it "bobbles". Spinners are made by attaching a small pin through a hole in the larger pin so that the smaller one is free to spin around. Blinkies are just what the name suggests, they have a built in light which flashes or "blinks". The light is a small LED which is powered by a small battery fixed in the back of the pin along with an on/off switch. The flashing LED is often fixed in place of an eye in the character depicted on the pin, or it may be used to show the location of the team's home town on a map.

Baseball lapel pins can be finished with different sort of colours such as glitter which catches the light attractively and may be used just to highlight the name of the team. Translucent colours allow the shiny polished metal of the pin to show through and reflect the light. You can even choose to have some fluorescent or "glow in the dark" color on your pin.

Baseball trading pins are an attractive very affordable collector's item, you can even buy special collectors bags to store and protect you pins. These are real handy if you travel to games or collectors fairs to trade pins.