Hello, everyone -- this looks interesting but I'm still not sure how it works exactly. Would someone care to explain? Thanks!

I believe they said on facebook its working like it has the past two years.  You buy X pins and that gets you X amount of rares.  I believe you need 7 receipts to get the first rare.  Prior to the pandemic, you could get rares by trading with Gen Con staff, but they stopped that when Gen Con moved online in 2020.

Otherwise the trading works in the sense that you can trade pins with anyone willing.  Some vendors will trade pins, others won't.  There is also a pin trading meetup daily specifically for people to trade pins.  In the past it's been in Lucas Oil but I don't know where that is happening this year.

Thank you, nesbit37!

So, are you supposed to only trade pins with the vendors, or do they also have them for sale?

Most vendors will have them for sale.  We have a pin, Hit 'em With a Shoe booth 2660, its the alien conductor guy that kind of looks like a yellow octopus.  I am willing to trade for other Pin Bazaar pins if I don't already have them, but not all vendors will do that.  Some vendors only sell their pins, and some vendors may only give you a pin if you buy a certain product.  Sometimes there are vendors that will give you a pin for doing a demo or something like that but I find that is not very common.

Random question:

I've decorated mine and my friend's lanyards with pins that have some sort of relation to GenCon activities, but aren't official pins. Is that a faux pas, or is it okay?

It's fine.

Shame on you not to warn him of the dangers of roving Relevant Pin Gangs.

I can certainly see this being a carryover where Disney Adults would never be caught dead with non-Disney pins while on the grounds or something

So mpagnotta310's question made some sense to me!