Custom Trading Pins

Baseball Pins | Softball Pins | Printed Pins

History of Trading Pins
Pin trading is nothing new. According to Little League Online, trading pins began with the modern Olympics in Athens, Greece in 1896, used to identify officials and athletes. The first true pin – in the Swedish colors of blue and yellow -- appeared in 1906. Pin trading really took off at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, N.Y., with spectators and pin collectors joining the athletes in celebrating world harmony.

Custom Trading Pins are as much a part of Little League Baseball as hot dogs and bubble gum. Little League introduced its first “official” trading pin in 1983. Since then, the trend has really taken off. Little League teams entering play-off tournaments trade their baseball pins with opposing teams from all over the world. These trading pins typically have a team’s name, mascot, colors and the year printed on their pins in various shapes and forms.

Year after year, pin trading just keeps getting more and more popular, and many kids look forward to trading their pins with players from all over the world. It really is a great memory keepsake for the kids and a neat novelty item that can literally last a lifetime.

Trading Pins are not just for Baseball
Baseball currently has the greatest demand for custom trading pins, with softball following a distant second and hockey, soccer, swimming, basketball and football starting to catch on. Custom Pin Trading is not just for kids; parents, coaches and even officials get involved in the action. What greater joy is there to a mother and coach (besides winning the World Series) than to see their kids building special friendships with opponents and teams from around the country and even world wide?

Baseball Trading Pins - Custom Softball Pins - Custom Trading Pins

Order Trading Pins on Time
One mistake many coaches and parents make is that they wait until the last minute to place their trading pin order, not leaving enough time for manufacturing and shipping of the pins. At best, we can offer to ship stock trading pins via UPS overnight delivery to your door. We highly recommend placing your order early. That way, when the factories get inundated with literally hundreds of thousands of custom trading pin orders, yours won’t be stuck in the system. If you find yourself making a tournament play-off and didn't order custom pins, all is not lost. You can order our stock pins and we can overnight them to your door the following day.

Custom Trading Pin Process
The custom trading pin process is a nice adventure in the art of metal craftsmanship. Your artwork is first sent to our factory, where a die is made in the shape of your pin. Then the metal is stamped and hand polished. If you’re ordering soft enamel trading pins, your design will have slightly raised edges that will act as a reservoir to hold the different ink colors. Ink is added to these pins by hand, using specially crafted ink needles that inject the ink into each area of your pin. The pin is then heated to over 1600° F, which helps the metal and the ink adhere to each other. Hand polishing comes next. We recommend adding an epoxy finish (at no extra cost), which helps protect the pin from scratches and adds a nice luster finish.

If you order offset digital pins or photo etched pins, there are no raised edges. Your artwork is digitally printed or silk screen printed and then applied to a smooth pin surface. Epoxy coating is then added to the pin to protect the surface and colors from scratching. Printed Pins offer finer detail because the artwork is computer generated. Photographs or even gradients can be used in your custom pin design when using these processes.

Our Mission
Our goal at Direct Trading Pins is to help you understand the trading pin process and know the difference between the types of trading pins available so you can make the best informed decision possible. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact one of our custom trading pin representatives. We are here to help you every step of the way.