The Dark Side of Disney - Leonard Kinsey [42]
“’However,’ I’ll say, ‘I would like some of those pins from the new such-and-such set. If you buy four of them for me I’ll definitely trade those for this here Hidden Mickey pin you want so badly.’
“So they freak out and rush over and buy the pins, and I nonchalantly ask if I can have the receipt for my collection to show when and where I got specific pins. They always hand over the receipt, and I hand them the Hidden Mickey pin, and they’re thrilled even through they’ve just spent at least $15 on a little piece of junk.
“And the punch line, of course, is that I immediately return the pins to the pin cart or store for cash, and then move onto the next store/cart and repeat the scam all over again. The following weekend I’ll go to a different park and do the same thing. I can easily clear $300 a day with this scam!”
To add onto Tricia’s story, a fairly recent development is that the Chinese factories that manufacture the pins are not destroying the original molds, but are instead illegally selling them to people who then create thousands of counterfeit “scrappers”, i.e., cheap knock-offs of high-demand pins from those same molds.
If a scammer knows where to look they can get these scrappers for pennies each, and either use those to trade for legitimate pins which they can then sell on eBay, or use them for the above scam, essentially saving themselves the day of trading with CMs.
So far Disney doesn’t seem to give a shit about these counterfeits, and to be honest, some of the copies are so good that I’m not sure how they’d even begin to crack down on them, aside from making CMs take a daylong course on spotting counterfeits, which would just be a ridiculous waste of time and money. Eventually they’ll probably try to crack down on the Chinese factories, but I doubt they’ll have much luck with that, unless they’re legitimately willing to move their business to more reputable factories, which would drive up the cost of pins exponentially.
If you don’t want to get scammed when you’re pin trading, there’s a great site that shows pictures of legit pins: http://www.pinpics.com. If you have a Smart Phone with you in the parks it’s relatively easy to search the site for the pin you’re about to receive in trade to see if it’s a scrapper or not. Hopefully they’ll come out with a mobile app soon….
BED BUGS AND OTHER CREEPY CRAWLIES
Bed bugs are pretty nasty little creatures. They feast on your blood at night, leaving huge burning welts that take weeks to heal. And if they follow you home from vacation (usually stowing away in your luggage) it will cost thousands of dollars to get rid of them because the only surefire way to kill bed bugs (aside from DDT, which is illegal) is by roasting them at 128-degrees or higher for more than 30 minutes. Unfortunately bed bug infestations have been on the rise over the past decade in the United States both because of the DDT ban and because of an increase in international travel.
A bedbug doing what it does best… sucking your blood!
There are some precautions you can take to cut down on the chances of being infected by this menace. When you get to your room, don’t immediately start unpacking everything and then jump in the bed for a nap! Leave your luggage right outside the door and have one person go into the room with a small flashlight (the LED ones on key chains work great). Lift up the corners of the mattress and use the flashlight to check the mattress seams and the box spring for little brown or red specs (i.e., blood pooped out by bed bugs). You can also use a sticky-tape lint brush or the reverse side of a maxi-pad to wipe around the headboard, checking for the same brown specks or