April 18-20, 2025: Pin trading! It’s a thing at Star Wars Celebration, and a pretty big deal to some! Pin collection has become a bit of an addition for me over the past few years. Between Celebration, Disney, and other random sources, I have over 100 Star Wars pins in my hoard. Star Wars Celebration has it’s set of guidelines for attendees to abide by when pin trading. In short, be respectful of others, and get your start at the Celebration Show Store.
At the Show Store, you can buy Celebration exclusive pin sets and also mystery pin packs. Mystery packs are where’s it’s at if you actually want to trade your pins. I don’t like to trade pins that I only have one of… I like to collect those! So to make this fun, I need duplicates! With the mystery packs, you never know what you’re going to get and chances are, if you buy multiple packs, you are going to get more than one of the same pin. I suppose with the pin sets, you could just buy more than one pack of the same thing, but mystery packs also have that small element of surprise and big anticipation.
There are also designated sponsor booths around the show. The deal is, if you buy something from them, then you receive their exclusive sponsor pin for free! I have found with these that some of these places you have to spend quite a bit to receive the pin which may make that pin more difficult to acquire, especially when a sponsor has a pin that you really want, but you don’t want to spend $100 or $400 or more on one of their items! Other sponsor booths don’t have a minimum spend though, so you can buy something for $10 and get the pin. Sponsor pins can also be traded, so I imagine there is some wheeling and dealing going on between Celebration attendees as required!
So let’s see… Based on the image above displaying which sponsors had which pins, there’s the Darth Maul pin that I missed out on at Topps. You snooze, you lose! Oh and there’s Tenyo… I should have bought one or two of their jigsaw puzzles to get the Asajj Ventress pin… DOH! And Ensky, I could have got one of their tapestries and some stickers or something like that for the Ewok pin. MAN! Stance, well I could have bought a pair of socks… Who doesn’t like Stance socks?? Apparently I’m not very good at this!
I did manage to acquire one of the sponsor pins, the Fennec Shand pin (one of my favourite pins from this show) from ‘eye up’, by grabbing this lil’ Vader beanbag plushie that fits in the palm of my hand:
By the end of the weekend, I managed to acquire 18 unique pins of the apparently 54 available at this show. Some I bought and kept, while others I did trade! Looks like I have two duplicates still (Boba Fett and Shin Hati), so I’ll be looking to trade those at a future show!
The checklist versus my pins:
The one Star Wars Celebration Japan pin I wanted the absolute most out of all the pins at the show, was the Loth Cat. You couldn’t buy it, and it wasn’t a sponsor pin. Show staff were who you had to go for this, but this pin was either in hot demand or short supply because I failed to complete this most epic quest. No staff I ran into had it anymore, and all show attendees that I saw with it, did not want to trade it away. Boo hoo hoo! I would have traded multiple pins just to get the Loth Cat but nope! No one that had it would budge.
Sometimes after a show if I did not acquire something I was after, I keep a loose eye on ebay for people trying to sell it. Sometimes I’m willing to pay a bit extra than the original value, but I’m not into paying exorbitant amounts to get it. Recently I saw my Loth Cat listed for between $88 (+ shipping) to $552 CAD. That’s quite the difference in price! When I see these wild prices, I do wonder if people are actually buying. I suppose if you want something badly enough then you’ll do what it takes.
I am still hoping to add this Loth Cat to my collection, and will be keeping an eye out for it at future shows, maybe ebay too. Someone might be trading or selling one, you never know!
