DPF Sales Fun!

Today marks the first time that I ever completed a transaction on the Disney Pin Forum (this is pin trading related). Since I don't really have much of a collection to trade, I decided to go the route of purchasing. I purchased two pins and the seller kindly threw in two of my "most wanted" pins!

Of course, since I love Stitch (and Jasmine), I won't be trading these but they are a happy addition to my collection!

The Art of Book Plates

Earlier I wrote an epically long ramble about how "saving money" actually translates to "acquiring more books and useless junk" but then decided to just write about books instead. Those of you who are aware of my bookwormismness, know that I'm somewhat active on GoodReads. And by active I mean that I track books that I'm reading but I don't actually write reviews (I thought about it seriously for a while, but then decided against it -- I cannot remember why). On LibraryThing, I have two accounts: one for my huge library back in New York and another to track the books I have with me in California (or are still boxed somewhere).

All of my life, being someone who had semi-permanence in the school library (see: Library Club in grade school, Librarian Achievement Award in junior high, and knowing every member of my library on campus) the one thing I always loved the classic Browne Issue System. This may be a foreign concept to some of you so I advise you to read the Wikipedia page along with ex libris.

Of course, this took to the absolute back burner because my library back in New York is at 380 books. Can you imagine trying to glue 380 pockets to books? Cataloging them was hard enough the first time (and then the second time when someone messed with my library and it will be difficult a third time because that's going to happen at some time). Luckily my library in California is sitting pretty at 84 books (and no, I'm not counting ebooks, I've actually removed them from my catalog) so I figured it was time to invest in an ex libris. 

Luckily this is where Etsy came in handy. At first I thought that I'd invest in two different bookplates with one being a classic design and the other being one with a Ravenclaw design. One would be used for the New York library and the other for the California one. I decided to just get one but then I had to narrow it down because there are so many choices. So I had to narrow it down, I knew that while I loved the pockets, those were out along with any stickers. I needed a stamp and I ended up in Asspocket Productions' store. 

I told her what I wanted and she worked closely with me to figure out the aesthetics of it. I'm incredibly happy with the stamp I got and I think it's cute that it's now part of her catalog. It's the Teapot & Teacup stamp and you can see it below. 

This was definitely a frivolous spend but you know what, I love it and I think it adds a bit of character to all of my books. Now the only catch is to make sure I don't mess up when I'm stamping.

Oh and a message to my beloved bibliophiles that have been waiting over my New York library like vultures... I love you but my dear Cheshire cat but now there will always be proof of what was mine. 

Elongated Pennies

Somewhere on this blog I have mentioned that I am a bit of a collector. I did think that I was going to get to talk about my Vinylmation collection first, but I was able to take photos (albeit very bad photos) of my penny collection first. It all started with road trips as a child, you stop into a rest stop, find some way to make my parents spend 51‌¢ (it's the easiest angle) then promptly loose said coin. As I got older, I got better at remembering to keep the coin and put it away in a safe place but I also got better about not asking for an elongated coin.

Then it happened. The perfect storm of teenage stubbornness, elongated coins, and Disney (by the way, I blame Disney for this collection). At the age of 16, we're in Disney World -- I now absolutely assume that we went to Disney's Hollywood Studios (more evidence to follow) but there my parents said that they wouldn't give in to getting us elongated coins since my brother and I were officially too old but mostly because we kept loosing them. To which I retorted that if they got us the Penny Passports (conveniently it was located in the store that we were in right next to the machine) that we wouldn't loose them anymore.

As a joke almost, they gave in just to prove me wrong and to sweeten the deal, they let us get an elongated quarter. Little did they know that I actually did remember to save some older ones and had a total of two back home, which brought my grand total up to three with the new one.

I won.

Last year, which is about 10 years later (give or take, mostly give) I finally completed the first one (which is in black). After I completed it, my boyfriend was incredibly kind enough to keep his eyes out for a new one and we found it in Monterey, CA after visiting the aquarium. 

I'm actually kind of surprised at myself that I've kept up with it for so long. Even more surprised that every penny comes from a place I visited. I somehow managed to loose all the "Good Luck" ones but not the landmarks, cities, or attractions ones. Anyhow, it's been an interesting journey in the world of pennies and it's something I plan on ending anytime soon (well, unless I fill out the second book).

Now while I can say that I have a lot of them that I like such as the one from NASA Kennedy Space Center, Maui, Kauai, and the variety I've picked up from Disney these three are my favourites (probably because you can take better photos of them.

Lilo & Stitch and The Nightmare Before Christmas are in my top favourites so I couldn't go without having a coin from them. (If I had one for Alice in Wonderland then I could say that I had all of my favourites). The Haunted Mansion Holiday ride during Halloween is one of my absolute favourite rides and I generally can't leave without getting on it at least once. It's been so long since I've been on it when it's just The Haunted Mansion ride that I don't remember what it's like to not have Jack Skellington take over.

Finally it's this coin from the Tower of Terror -- this was the one that I got along with my first Penny Passport as a memento of my first roller coaster ride.

A Serious Talk About Disney

Title explains it all, but let me get into a bit of the background here. I've always been a huge fan of Disney and that comes from my parents but moreso mother. She is a huge fan of animation in general and growing up as I found myself enamored with art, I had an abundance of appreciation for cel-animation, storyboards, claymation, and so forth. While I'm not a fan of the princesses, I can absolutely appreciate the art and production of them which comes from a simple book my parents bought me as a child: Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs & the Making of the Classic Film 50th Anniversary -- I could go on about this, but I sort of wanted to explain the long history in a nutshell. Anyhow, if you ever have the chance -- even if you're not a fan of Disney, watch the videos of them doing the voice recordings, storyboards, or just the production.  To date my favourite Disney movies are Alice in Wonderland, Lilo & Stitch, and The Nightmare Before Christmas -- three movies that use very different techniques.

The next layer of fandom comes through the visits to Disney World. Now I couldn't tell you much about the visit as a child though there does exist a fantastic picture of my crying over the loss of a balloon. My family loves pointing out that picture, I don't even remember that happening but I know the emotions in that picture. Anyhow, we got the chance to visit again when I was sixteen and I had a lot of fun which includes riding my roller coaster rides (though which came first, I forget). Rock 'n' Roller Coaster which I got a migraine from and/or the Tower of Terror where my glasses flew away from me and then my mother and I proceeded to visually search for them while my brother and father had fun enjoying the ride. (Enjoying the ride is for chumps who... well, ah. I think this means Tower of Terror was my first ride because of my newbie error).

Side Note: I developed an extreme fear of heights sometime after this. Oh well.

Moving along to years later, during the advent of Blizzcon, I decided that my friends must endure Disneyland. Somehow they didn't disagree with me so we went two years in a row. But did I just skip the most important part? Yes. Well, no.

See in the three visits that I remember to a Disney park, the one thing I've always wanted to do is participate in pin trading. I'm a collector and an organizer, and each time I saw those magical pin trading posts, I really wanted it. When I was 16, my parents tried to reason with me to tell me that it was a phase and that I shouldn't indulge because I'd end up doing nothing with them. I relented because I wasn't even sure who I'd trade with or how, especially since it was just one visit to Disney World. Then during both visits to Disneyland I talked myself out of it just like I talked myself out of the Vinylmations. But the funny thing is that I still wanted them and so over 10 years later I finally decided to jump into pin trading.

And by jump, I mean, barely touch the water. I really wanted the Mechanical Stitch but I figured that if I was going to do this then I needed to get a starter kit. The problem was that during my last two visits, there were no Stitch packs avaiable so I had settled on getting The Nightmare Before Christmas. However with a bit of poking around online, I found that there were some Stitch sets that came in red or blue.


Frankly, I would have gotten them both but I thought I was being ridiculous. Mostly because I'd never trade Stitch which made the whole "pin trading" part kind of hard. I'll deal with that when the time comes.


After much analyzing (and disbelief that I actually got it), I'm quite content with what I got. I did check (and double check) to make sure that I didn't get any scrappers or counterfeits. The bag they came in still had the Disneyland price tag on it and everything looks legit, so perhaps I didn't need to check as much as I did but as a newbie, I might as well educate myself.

So why write this lengthy post about pin trading? Partially because I wanted to. I'm a verbose kind of gal and I need a hobby. But this new hobby away from the old hobbies is also a bit on the consuming side. I was lucky to go to Disney parks as many times as I did (actually, I'd like to thank the friends and family that allowed for that to happen) but never picked these things up. Which meant that I had to get them online which creates a bit of a risk (not to mention one hell of a markup) so it's better off to have the small indulgence but to not quite jump in.


Who knows though, perhaps if there's another Disney trip in my future I can get some new ones and actually participate in the pin trading. But I'm going to need an Alice in Wonderland set in order to trully give in (again).