I do collect pins

My niece, Char, said she was patiently waiting for the pin collection blog. Well, here is some of that. I have been collecting pins for about 32 years. I have over 2000 pins in my collection. I collect anything and everything. There are three basic production methods for enameled lapel pins:  Cloisonné, fine (or soft) enamel, and photo etch-plate.  My favorite of these is the Cloisonne. I think they are a much  better quality and they just look nicer. They are also the most expensive. I collect any pins, even those made of plastic. 

My pin collecting started one night when my mom and dad and I went to a CB break. A CB break was a dance that a CB radio club would put on and everyone that was interested would go. It was a dance with a live band, held in a hall where they had a bar or they would set up one of their own. A lot of the clubs used the Moose hall or the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) hall or some other organizations hall. This was a way for the club to make money for their club. All of the clubs gave to charities so they wanted to raise money. They usually had a break once a month and usually on the same day, like maybe the first Friday of the month or the second Saturday. At this break we went to, there was a vendor who made name tags and sold other things and one of those things were hat pins. 

A hat pin is a pin with what we call a tack back. It's a pin that has a little round clasp on the  back that you squeeze two pieces of metal together and that releases it and you can pull the back off. Nowadays a lot of the backs are plastic or rubber and they just push on and pull off. Anyway my dad saw a pin and bought it for me. It's been so long now that I don't remember which one he got for me. But I put it on my hat that night and that started it all. I kept that pin on my hat for so long. My hat was a black Stetson that I wore all the time and now I was going to have pins in it just like Bud (John Travolta in "Urban Cowboy" 1980). After that first pin my family was very good at getting pins for me and on the hat they went. After my first six months I had about 300 pins and over half of them were given to me by friends or family.

One my mom gave me

When I got more pins than I had room for, I would take an old pin off and put a new pin on. And to keep track of this I had all my pins listed in my computer using a database program. I would have a name for the pin, who gave it to me, when they gave it to me and if it was on or off the hat. When I took old ones off I had a framed pin holder that you could buy that was about 11x14. It could hold a lot of pins.  Over the years I've received so many pins and so many are special or have special stories. I have some of those for you.

One of the pins I have came from my boss when I was working for Metermaster, a company that sold meters and test equipment. My boss came up to me one day and asked me, "Dave, will you put any pin on your hat?" I replied, "Yes, why do you ask?" He said, "I have a pin that I'm going to get the next time I go to Sacramento and give it to you." I said, "Okay". This was on a Friday and come Monday morning my boss had a pin and handed it to me. I looked at it and laughed out loud. He had found a pin that was a hand flipping the finger. It showed the palm side of the hand, as if someone was holding up their hand to you. I thought that was so funny that I put it on the hat and it stayed on for some time before it was cycled to be taken off. My boss was surprised that I would wear this on my hat, much less, front and center. When this pin was ready to cycle off, I put it a special pin holder that you can get from  Hard Rock Cafe, Disneyland or other touristy places.

Another special pin stayed on until I stopped wearing the hat entirely. Whenever people would say "I'm going to steal this pin", I would reply, "First read this pin" and I would point it out. It said " WARNING! If you value your life, as much as I value my hat. Don't F*** with it". And that would  stop them from stealing any pins. 

Another pin that was on my hat forever, came about because of one of the CB clubs whose breaks I attended every month. My CB handle was Baby Huey. Sometimes for a joke and to fool some others, I dressed like Baby Huey, diaper, little blue shirt, bonnet and baby bottle. It was pretty funny. One club, The Hot Peppers, had their own pins and the only way to get one was to be a member of the club. I wanted one but I didn't want to join the club, because I was already a member of another club. So one night at one of the Hot Pepper breaks one of the members knew I wanted a pin. So he came over to me and sat down at the table and said he had a proposition for me. I said,"Okay, what's the proposition?" He said, "I'll give you a Hot Pepper pin on the condition that if you ever come to our break without the pin on your hat you have to come and dress as Baby Huey". I thought about it for a minute and said, "Okay, I'll do it". So he handed me the pin and on the hat it went. It was on the hat forever and I never dressed as Baby Huey for the Hot Pepper club.

My brother and his wife would get me a lot of my pins. Mostly they got me sets of pins that they would buy at a gift shop down at Knotts Berry Farm. Usually I got those for my birthday or for Christmas. One of the first ones they gave me was a set of Coca Cola and flags from every country that went to the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, CA. It was a set of 150 pins. What a beautiful Christmas present, I loved it. I have so many favorites and I don't have pictures of all of them but I'll try to find some as I write more stories about my pin collection.

Hope you like the story Char. Love ya.