[wptw]

"a CA in CA", seems you're new to this debate. We collectors ARE fraternity and sorority members, so we don't generally fault you for getting mushy over the subject. We get mushy about it too. No, mushy is no problem. We only fault people who get irrational, profane and violent!

As "sororitygirl2" said, it comes down to simple supply and demand: How common the pin is, how many people want it, and how far those people are willing to go to get it.

If it’s a Pi Phi or Alpha Phi pin, you’ve got a guy with really deep pockets to contend with. If it’s a Kappa key, you’re battling boatloads of people who’ve read in the NYTimes how Kappa keys can magically make you rich. If it’s a rare 1800s pin, you’ve got collectors who recognize this fact and will go to greater lengths to get something relatively unique.

Many a dealer has tried unsuccessfully to cash in on the current “fraternity and sorority pin ebay phenomenon”. They find a beautiful gold pin with beautiful little pearls on it and figure it’s their turn to get rich. So they buy it for $20, put it on ebay with a $50 price tag and wait for the gravy train to arrive. Trouble is, they’ve found a Beta Sigma Phi cooking sorority pin, and even though it’s a solid gold pin with real pearls, the value to the ebay community (collectors and members) is somewhere around $1.50 because there are roughly 48 gazillion of them out there. When I meet these people at antique shows, I suggest they simply scrap the pin, take their lumps and collect their $5. Some of them do. Some of them just keep parading around the same $2 pins wearing $50 price tags show after show after show.

The flipside is, smart collectors can often buy incredible pins from the 1800s for dirt cheap because they’re typically unjewelled and made from a small quantity of gold. So dealers assume they’re less valuable.

But dealers are getting smart, too. That’s why the price of Baird’s Manuals has skyrocketed. Demand for them suddenly shot up when dealers realized this book could help them buy and sell smarter. Supply and demand, once again.

But there does seem to be an ebay “baseline”, which I define as the average price you’d expect to see for a plain 10k gold version of most NIC/NPC initiates' badges from the 1940s to 1960s. That number has gradually increased from around $25 a few years ago to around $65 today. Obviously, bigger groups with more dead alumni generate more pins and tend to be toward the low end of the baseline range (SAE, Sigma Chi, ATO, DZ, Tri-Delt, etc.) and smaller groups with a smaller supply of badges tend to be more valuable (Delta Phi, Delta Psi, Kappa Alpha order).

In general terms, things that generate more demand and therefore higher prices are: gold content, gem content, condition, age, date, character (ie. social vs. professional vs. honorary), etc. That’s all fairly intuitive.

Hope that helps to answer the question.

And CutiePie2000, I'm hurt that you couldn't properly remember my name. After all we've been through together!

wptw