Vintage Pins
 

This is certainly not an advertisement; it's more like a warning. For those who comb ebay for GLO pins to rescue, there is also a company who specializes in finding pins and selling them. It's not an auction, they set the price.

I didn't know if others knew about it.

What's the name of this company? Does it have a website?

Hi Honeychile,

Yes, that site has been around for maybe 3 years. It was started by a collector who I guess figured this was a better outlet for his "non-keeper" pins than ebay.

Most collectors have their "keeper" pins, and then they have a lot of pins that are either redundant, or are inferior to the "keeper" pins in some way, or simply don't fall into the "theme" of their collection. When you see collectors selling pins on ebay, that's usually what's going on (not raw profiteering as most people initially assume). They're liquidating the less valuable pins in their collection to fund the purchase of more valuable pins. That's how collections evolve.. just like any collection does, I suppose.

And that's also how a lot of pins find their way to new collectors, to members of the GLO, or back to the GLO headquarters. There's sort of a constant circulation that benefits everyone.

The owner of VFP.com seems to be a good guy and it doesn't look to me like he's trying to exploit the ebay phenom and mass market those badges. That wouldn't make much sense. His prices are about 50% higher than the ebay market price, so that really wouldn't be a plan for success.

If I were to guess, I'd say he just likes working with the various badges and this is a fun way to combine his hobby with a little bit of profit. The site really isn't geared toward collectors anyway, because frankly the badges there are overpriced and nothing special. But it's a good alternative for those who can't wait around for the badge they want to show up on ebay.

Hope that info is helpful.

wptw

But do you think it is right to sell badges over the internet?

I know of no one (correct me if I am wrong, GChatters...) who LIKES seeing their badges sold on the internet. Some have the position that they will not engage in any transaction that might encourage the sale of badges. Others feel that they would rather "save" badges than see them go to non-Greek pin collectors.

That depends. Some GLOs never actually sell their badges to their members. They do charge for the manufacturer, and distribution, but ownership is always retained by that GLO. In those cases, the argument can be made that selling badges is selling stolen merchandise.

We have a sister who has purchased at least 14 badges off of Ebay and sent them all to our International Headquarters.

Red and Buff Roses to her!

Dee

Indeed!!

I understand collector's, but the reality is that most GLOs have a clause that states that pins must be returned to their (inter-)National Headquarters, should the owner die or not pass the pin to a legacy. That would make buying a pin NOT from your own GLO receiving stolen property - morally, if not legally.

I'm always happy to hear of Keepers of the Key, Guardians of the Diamonds, and other such groups!

So this got me to thinking one day... isn't selling badges really selling stolen property? So I asked my boss (who is a lawyer) to help me argue this case... we came down to this...

A. It would be really hard to argue the case because those clauses aren't made known to all. For example, the little old man who dies and his evil children sell all his goods at an estate auction (not everyone is evil... just being funny)... unless the children had it written in a will or stated elsewhere, how would they know that it would be stolen?

B. Those clauses have only been around for most groups for the last 20 years, any Badges sold that are dated before that, might not fall under the clauses.

There were a few other points that he brought up, but I don't remember them all right now. The only way I think that we could stop the sell of badges and consider them as stolen or fenced goods would be to make the public aware that they are fenced if sold and that you can go to jail or pay fines for purchasing such goods.

GtownGirl98, your lawyer boss is right. I was saying exactly the same thing two and a half years ago. And even if the GLO really did maintain ownership through some sort of official lease (which they don’t), that agreement would not survive the death of the original owner and be binding on the heirs and assigns - the people that inherit the estate. I suppose the GLO could show up at the probate hearing and make a claim, but that would be a pretty ambitious project! And anyway, they would need some kind of a signed lease agreement – not just a page from the quarterly magazine outlining the GLO’s policy on badge ownership.

Trying to argue that GLO badges bought at flea markets and estate sales are actually stolen property is just laughable. Wishful thinking.

Yes. Because it’s not illegal. And because the people in the ebay community who find it morally offensive are in a microscopic minority. And because I don’t imagine myself in a position to dictate to my fellow capitalists what’s right and what’s wrong.

wptw

I think, if our respective organizations want to protect our badges, it's impotant that new members are told right from the start that badges are to be returned to HQ upon death/passed to a legacy/buried with the owner.
I also think it's important that chapters go after girls who depledge/disaffiliate from their organization to get the badge back.
If more members respect this, then fewer badges will go to the collectors.

What I don't appreciate are the sellers who overly inflate selling prices and/or have ghost bidders driving up the prices because they now know that members are willing to pay almost anything to retain their badges. The people who jump on the badge-selling bandwagon because they know there is plenty of money to be made on it. I know not everyone does this but there are a few who do. Some people may consider that good business, but I guess I'm not one of them.

What I do appreciate are those sellers who are willing to work with the organizations and buyers and can agree on a fair price that benefits everyone.

There is a recent success story posted in another Kappa forum where a member had realized that the two badges being sold in the same auction were her grandmother's sisters'. She notified our HQ who confirmed their membership, got in touch with the seller and explained the situation. They were able to reach an agreement and the badges were returned to the family.

Well, shill bidding actually IS against the ebay TOS, so I agree that's wrong. Although I can't say I really see much of it. Most auctions sell at or near typical market price, so I think most of the bidding is absolutely legit. Collectors have a reputation to protect within their little community, and dealers who regularly sell GLO badges rely on repeat business, so they're less likely to pull any funny business. The ones to watch out for are the ones who only have one or two badges to sell.

As for overly inflated prices, I'm not sure how a seller could overly inflate a sales price on an open auction site. The final bid price is by nature the market price. If the start price or reserve is too high, it won't sell. So how is it inflated?

There are a lot of good sellers out there who will work with the orgs to return important badges, or to return stolen badges to their rightful owners. But make no mistake - they're still selling badges to make a living.

[sarcasm] God forbid someone in the good old U S of A should jump on a moneymaking bandwagon! [/sarcasm]

Seriously, why is it wrong for someone to make money selling a GLO badge?

wptw

That's why the emphasis is on I. Those are my individual beliefs. And I said I know not everyone does it, there are plenty of good sellers out there--but there are the bad ones, too.

By inflating I mean the people who obviously haven't done research and set the reserve price for a plain gold badge that's under 10 years old over $50. You can buy a new one for cheaper than that. Why bother bidding on it? Those are the people jumping on the badge bandwagon. They haven't done any research on it, aren't collectors, they just want a way to make a quick buck. And someone will bid on it because there will always be that person who's just discovered eBay and sees their badge for sale and thinks "I need to get that before someone else does" without realizing what's really going on. (FWIW I don't appreciate irresponsible bidders either)

God forbid people look beyond money for once.

Fair enough. But it seems more than a little hypocritical to me. Y’all go on endlessly [I mean ENDLESSLY] about the Prada and Kate Spade stuff you buy on ebay, but are you concerned about the people who find those products morally offensive because of Prada’s use of fur and Kate Spade’s sweatshop issues?

Some of you are happy to help pay the mortgage for THOSE sellers, but god forbid a badge seller should make a dime.

wptw

But if someone pays $50 for a badge that’s worth $2, the market price is still $50. How much do you think it costs to make a Quarter Pounder with Cheese? (that’s Royale with Cheese for our European readers and Tarantino fans)

If I’m a busy seller, why research it? Pick a high price. If it sells, Mazeltov! If not, relist it at a lower price. They’re not trying to spite you. It’s a strategic decision.

wptw

This post completely sums it up. The key word is EDUCATION.

Educate our members and let them know it's their responsibility to in turn educate their families about the disposition of their badges after death. Make members aware of the REAL cost of their badge (many don't realize what the badge alone costs as its payment is included in their overall pledge fees) and that just because someone is selling a pin for $50, that isn't its real worth. Get the stuff back from girls who are terminated (many sororities do have this written in that if you're terminated you must surrender your badge). And handle chapter closings with care and delicacy so the sisters don't get pissed off and sell their stuff on ebay to "get back" at the national - no one's brought this up, but I know it happens.

The point is we can't blame others for our own lack of knowledge. My dad doesn't know designer from a hole in the ground - if I croaked and had a cache of Kate Spades, he'd probably sell them at a garage sale for $2 each. And I don't think any girl on here would walk past that!!

But you can't really compare badges to handbags--apples and oranges so to speak.

People who find selling badges on ebay morally offensive do so because those badges mean something deeper to our members. It's not just a pretty piece of jewlery that anyone can buy, it's a bond that connects the hearts of hundreds of thousands of members over hundreds of years and they are only available to those in your org. It's a privelage and an honor to wear your badge. That's the thing many people don't understand.

Finding products morally offensive because of their product content or place/mode of production is a completely different vein. If you have the money, anyone can buy a Kate Spade bag or Prada shoes. Not everyone can respectfully and properly wear the badge of membership to a GLO.

I know that's how some people make their living, and if it's done with respect to the org and the buyers, then I'm okay with that. I don't agree with it but I obviously can't tell them to stop. And those who sell badges from estate sales or auctions or flea markets are almost guaranteed to make a profit--usually a large one at that. Never have I said it was wrong--just that I don't appreciate those types of sellers.

Along with making sure people are made aware to make clauses for their badge upon their passing, we also need to teach our members smarter ways to bid when badges do go up for sale on online auctions. The easiest thing: Don't. Leave it to the groups assigned to take care of those things. If you have a personal connection to the item, let your HQ or a member of that group know and let them work out negotiations with the seller. They have more experience and most likely a (hopefully) good reputation and will be able to work with them easier.

My point was that what some people find offensive, others find perfectly OK. So when you label something as “wrong” based on your personal feelings, that’s fair enough, but it’s bound to come off as hypocritical. That’s why I said “I don’t imagine myself in a position to dictate to my fellow capitalists what’s right and what’s wrong.”

You have your reasons for thinking it’s wrong to sell GLO badges. Others have their reasons for thinking it’s wrong to sell Prada and Spade. To an objective observer, that’s apples and apples. It’s only apples and oranges to YOU because one of them is important to YOU, so you build an argument around why your particular situation or objection is different than the other guy's. That's human nature.

OK, badges have a deep esoteric meaning and not everyone is entitled to them. But fur and sweatshops involve the life and death of living things, which by comparison makes a hunk of gold look pretty trivial.

Where we DO agree is with your proposed strategy for dealing with them when they do come up for auction. I have always advocated quietly rescuing the badges with as little noise as possible. Drama just drives up prices.

wptw

(because I just added it) I never said it was wrong per se, just that I don't appreciate those types of sellers. I don't agree with some of their practices, but obviously, I'm not going to order them to stop.

This is why I would never be a good businesswoman--I hate politics such as these! I'd probably end up taking a loss just because I felt sorry for someone! :)

Hee, don't ever say this to some people. That hunk of gold is far from trivial to them (myself included)! It's all about perspective. :)

That's right.

...and of course it's not trivial to me either, as you know.

wptw

Some groups do have alums, volunteers, or HQ employees to watch for badges and important items. Many do not.

Even those GLOs that watch for badges often cannot afford to spend the money to buy them. It would be preferable that all GLOs had the funds to support buying their respective badges off Ebay. Unfortunately this is just not the case. It does hurt to see very special, vintage, or charter member badges go into a non-member collector's hands.

I do wish that GLO members would communicate better with one another to prevent bidding wars when the ultimate goal is to simply get the item off the open market & return it to HQ. If you want an item personally, then I guess bid away!

For those who oppose the trade, then there is ONE way under our control to stop it... WE have to cut off the supply.

I know not all orgs have badge rescue groups--that post was geared towards those who do. I can't recount the number of times I've watched a badge auction and seen that sisters are bidding against sisters--most likely unknowingly--and only succeeding in driving the price up.

If you aren't sure your org has a group--check around; talk to your HQ and other alumnae. Watch auctions and see if the same bidders come up time and time again on badge auctions from your GLO. If possible, contact them.

If you don't have a group--start one. Talk to other alumnae or your HQ on ways to make it work. Talk to orgs that do have groups and find out how they make it work. Do research--learn the actual value on badges and what to look for to prove its heritage--and bid accordingly. Start off with a good relationship with the sellers and collectors and learn from them so you don't end up working against them.

If you do have a personal connection with the item, contact the seller and let them know. See if something can be arranged that benefits both of you. I agree with wptw that most sellers don't put these items up out of spite--if you are willing to work with them, they are most likely willing to work with you. But that also means you can't be accusatory when contacting them.

If more people were educated on how to bid smartly and responsibly, I believe that we would be able to win badge auctions at much lower prices (that really goes for any online auction). Unfortunately there are some that will always make their way into the hands of collectors and we're just going to have to accept that. Even though it doesn't have the same meaning to them as it does to us, hopefully it does have some meaning to them and will be taken care of.

Yes, we do need to educate our members and cut off the supply, but we also need to learn more economic ways to reclaim the badges that are already out there.

There are so many things that I would like to quote in this thread, but I decided this comment was the most important.

This is VERY true, and we have had a number of very positive exchanges with the sellers of our badges.

I agree with quite a bit that has been said here. Education is the key. We have seen our badges go for hundreds of dollars on ebay and none of us can consistently "rescue" them all therefore we prefer to keep them in Gamma Phi's hands from day one.

It's amazing how many women we've contacted to tell them that their badge was on ebay, who didn't even know that it was missing! I know EXACTLY where mine is and I check for it regularly, and I wear another one weekly.

As a group, we have criteria for the ones we go after, the others we leave to individual members or to the original owner. We have managed to reunite a number of them with the original owner.

We've greatly increased our educational materials on this subject since our Task Force concluded its research and we will have a wonderful presentation at our convention in June. We have even gone from being just a Task Force to a regular group with a new name (Crescent Catchers).

BUT, it's taken us a year and a half to get to the point we are at and we still have quite a ways to go in my opinion. But I see it only improving.

Melanie
Chair, Badge Task Force (aka Crescent Catchers)

You have NO idea how many "informational' things we have put out about our group and we STILL have members without a clue about us. It is VERY frustrating.

The bidding wars are precisely what we try to eliminate.

I know. Every time I see a sister (who is obviously new b/c they have little to no feedback) outbid another sister I just want to say, "No! Don't bid! Let the Keepers do their job, they know what they're doing!" It has to be frustrating (And I'm not even a member of KotK).

I guess all we can do is keep getting the word out and hope more people learn about these groups! I know we now have a downloadable form for members to fill out and decree what they want done with their badge.

Does anyone know for sure which orgs do have badge reclamation groups?

The only ones I am aware of are ours and Kappa, but I could be wrong. I'm simply going off information we received from individual NPC groups when we started in the Fall of 2002 and no one else told us they had any kind of organized group working.

I know a few women (Chi O and ZTA) have contacted us since we started about getting something for themselves.

You know, this brings up a very interesting point. I think your awareness programs are directly responsible for the fall in ebay badge prices over the last year.

High end badges have always sold for a lot of money, from the very beginning of ebay in 1997 right through to today. That’s because when it comes to high end badges, it’s always been collector vs. collector bidding. These badges usually sell for beyond what a typical GLO member or rescue group would pay – let’s say $500 or more, so members really have very little impact on final price. And since the core group of collectors is largely unchanged in the last 7 years, you wouldn't expect to see too much fluctuation in the market price of these high end badges. And in fact, you don't.

But the prices for middle of the road badges (post 1940 and/or plain gold for example) have changed dramatically in that same time period. In the late 1990s when it was mainly collectors on ebay, these prices were low. Around 2001 when the badges on ebay argument heated up there was a huge influx of new bidders (mostly GLO members), and the prices for these middle of the road badges skyrocketed. But in the last year the prices have settled back to a much more reasonable level. Why? Supply hasn't changed. Demand hasn't changed. The collectors haven't gone away. So why? I believe it's a direct result of members identifying themselves to each other on sites like GC, and networking to minimize member on member bidding.

People on GC used to blame collectors for driving up the prices, and since it always seemed very clear to me that it was member on member bidding driving up prices, I always argued that point. Collectors would very rarely overpay for a given badge, but members would do it every day (and still do - usually those new to GC as SmartBlonde mentioned). Collectors would bid their maximum and let the auction take its course (or snipe at the last minute), whereas individual members would sometimes place tens of bids throughout the entire auction. Basically, collectors bid like they always had ever since 1997, so it didn’t seem likely that we were doing anything to drive up prices.

Anyone remember this?


Someone accused me of just being bitter that the ebay prices had gotten so high, so I couldn’t get as many for my collection. I told her she was crazy, because collectors LOVE high ebay prices on middle of the road badges. And I was right – she is crazy ;)

Earlier I was talking about how collectors continually try to liquidate their inferior badges (those are the middle of the road badges) to fund the purchase of better ones (high end badges). High end badges always have been and always will be expensive. But when prices on middle of the road badges drop, it obviously makes it harder for collectors to finance their collections.

So limiting member on member bidding has dropped the prices on average badges, and this has actually made it tougher to be a collector. It may be counterintuitive, but it’s true. I am a lot less active today because I can’t raise as much money on regular auctions anymore.

I said all of this way back when, but I think at the time the issue was too hot and people were too emotional to think it through.

Sorry for the long post. I thought the rescue groups might find that interesting. If nothing else, I think it tells you part of what you’re doing is working. But the real lesson in all of this is…

...don’t ever doubt wptw! :D

Yes, I find that incredibly interesting and I'm going to try to make a point of copying and saving this whole thread somewhere so I can have it for future reference.

And sniping is a great invention............:D

wptw

Interesting facts, thanks!

Question: Why do the serious collectors (people that pay $500+ for an item) collect GLO badges? For their historical value? For their aesthetic value? To tick off people? (;) ) Just because? Are many collectors members themselves of GLOS or other similar organizations?

Just curious, that's all! :)

Hee hee, I won a pretty antique beaded bag with fleur-de-lis on it by sniping! :D Had to spend the last 5 minutes constantly refreshing my screen, but I'm glad I did!

Standing ovation for wptw!

I couldn't agree more. Just by reading several 'ebay pin' threads in multiple forums and the thread in the ADPi forum as well, it seems like members are bidding several times a day or throughout the course of the auction.

Just because say a collector or non-memeber is the highest bidder at the moment, it won't help if you outbid them if the auction still has 5 days to go (unless of course that is your absolute max you will pay). Because the collector or nonmember or member whoever could go online and bid again.

LIke someone else mentioned sniping is a wonderful thing :p

From the Kappa forum...

It's a persistent perception, isn't it?

Did you ever notice whenever someone is telling you about a car accident they were in, it was always the other driver's fault?

wptw

P.S. ISU Kappa, I wasn't ignoring your question about why collectors pay big bucks for special badges. But I feel like I've already monopolized this thread, so if you search my posts, you'll find my past replies to similar questions. The majority of my posts are on this subject, so it won't be hard to find. :)

Actually, the key word is WILL. Don't count on a greaving family trying to work its way through mountains of stuff to remember that your badge is to be returned to a headquarters they may not know the address for. If it really matters to you that your badge goes back to HQ, put it in your will.

No, I still think the key word is EDUCATION. If we constantly drill it into our members heads that our badges are special and they must be returned to HQ/passed on to a legacy or chapter/buried with the owner, then our members will remeber to leave specific instructions in a will so that family members will know what to do with it.

However, there are always those evil family members that will try and sell it after the members death, and there won't be anything we can do about it.

I did find some, and that helps a lot. You do a wonderful job of explaining it objectively and eloquently. Thank you! :)

While it's annoying to have all these non-greeks out collecting pins, I don't think it's evil! One of our advisors collects antique Chi Omega badges, and she has some really cool stuff from before badge standardization. I'd love to get a collection like hers going.

Personally, I'd rather have my family hold on to my pins and heirlooms than send something back to HQ. But I'd be really hurt if they sold it! In that case, I'd want my badge to go back to my chapter.

Arrgh! Collectors ARE greeks.

Hey Lady Pi Phi, can I borrow that drill when you're done with it?

wptw

Only if you promise to use it for good instead of evil ;)