If you’ve never tried Disney Pin Trading, you can read about getting started here.

Once you’ve dipped your toe into the pin trading pool, so to speak, you can’t help but come across the silver Disney Chaser Pins.  These metalic doppelgangers of some of our favorite, colorful pins first appeared in 2011.  They are “Hidden Mickey” pins (small Mickey head appears on these).  All Hidden Mickey pin collections (painted and chaser) are released on Cast Member lanyards.  Chaser pins, interestingly, are not released as part of the set they seem to belong to – they’re released (after the original, colorful ones) as part of a larger set of chaser pins belonging to a particular year.  Disney releases other chasers that are painted and also pins called “completer” pins, but today I’m just focusing on what little I know about the silver Hidden Mickey Chasers.

Steven Miller (Disney Merchandise Communications Manager) is a contributing writer on the Disney Parks Blog.  Mr. Miller describes chaser pins this way, “These pins are slightly more rare than their full color counterparts.  We don’t have as many produced which prompts the “chase” to find them (though I encourage walking carefully and slowly to your next trading destination )”

I’ve traded for chaser pins before, but had absolutely no idea what they were – only that the ones I received were silver duplicates of pins in a set I was collecting.  I actually felt they were an inferior, colorless, boring substitute for the “real” pin I was trying to find – little did I know that they were more rare and belonged to a set of their own.  Now that I know the Chaser pins are limited edition pins and are more challenging to locate – I’ll be giving them the respect they deserve!

In case you missed it and are a pin collector (or thinking about becoming one) – Mr. Miller has a fantastic post about pins for 2014 here.  I cannot wait to get to Disney World and dive back into pin trading / collecting – I’ve got a certain flying Orange Bird to find.  I’d also love to pick up an Alice in Wonderland Doorknob pin (one of the new ones this year).

So?  What about you?  Are you a pin collector?  Do you have many silver chaser pins in your collection?