Sliders are a popular enhancement to many baseball trading pins. They get their name because they actually slide a short distance across the main pin.

Some early popular sliders showed a baseball player sliding into home base, or a rocket lifting off into space. Yet, sliders do not necessarily have to slide along a straight line.

Designers at The Monterey Company have become more creative and made sliders arch along the side of the pin or jump across a field. Sliders can be placed just about anywhere to enhance your design!

They don’t necessarily have to be limited to the shape of baseballs either. One customer asked The Monterey Company to create a slider in the shape of an airplane. He wanted to depict where his team was traveling across the United States—on their way to Cooperstown, NY.

Sliders take time to construct and set up, so there’s a one-time set-up charge of $60, in addition to the price of the slider. Just like the main pin, sliders are priced according to quantity. For 100-200 pins, sliders cost $1.12 each; for 300-500 pins, sliders are .92 cents each and for 1,000 to 2,000 pins, sliders are only .77 cents each.

The main thing about sliders is they make trading pins look really cool! With a slider on your trading pin, players from other teams will definitely want to trade with you! Another good thing is that sliders do not wear down over time. They still look good years and years later on!

For more information on how a slider can make your trading pins truly unique, please contact The Monterey Company at 1-800-259-6496.

Posted: March 27th, 2008 under Case Studies, Lapel Pins, Trading Pins.
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Blinking lights, commonly called “blinkies,” have been a popular addition to baseball trading pins for years. They can make a mascot’s eyes look more menacing while calling attention to the pin itself.

To create the blinking effect, a small light bulb (called a light-emitting diode or LED), is placed on the pin and connected to a hidden battery box on the back. When turned on, the LED achieves full brightness in microseconds and begins to blink red or green. Sometimes adjustments may need to be made in the design to allow for enough space to hold a blinkie.

For example, one baseball team wanted two blinkies to accent their mascot’s eyes, a large lizard. To get both of them on the design, space between the lizard’s eyes needed to be widened. However, later on, the team decided to go with just one blinkie, so the artist at The Monterey Company redrew the lizard’s head to show a side view.

“We have blinkies at our office that are three years old–and still work” said Paul Stark, president of The Monterey Company. LED lights are difficult to damage and have a relatively long useful life.

One report estimates regular LEDs can last from 35,000 to 50,000 hours. By comparison, fluorescent bulbs last about 30,000 hours, and regular light bulbs last only 1,000–2,000 hours. When a LED is starting to fail, it will start to dim over time, rather than an abrupt burn-out like most household light bulbs. They do not contain mercury, unlike compact fluorescent lights.

Although LEDs are popular now, they were invented more than 88 years ago. In the mid 1920s, Russian Oleg Vladimirovich Losev created the first LED, but his research, though distributed in scientific journals, was ignored.In 1961, experimenters Bob Biard and Gary Pittman of Texas Instruments, received the patent for LEDs, but Nick Holonyak, Jr. of the General Electric Company, developed the first practical visible-spectrum LED in 1962and is known as the “Father of the Light-Emitting Diode.”

Let LED blinkies light up your trading pin! Call The Monterey Company for a free estimate at 1-800-259-6496 or visit the trading pins gallery.

Posted: March 12th, 2008 under Trading Pins.
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Trading Pins at Cooperstown 2008

Located on the outskirts of the “Home of Baseball” (Cooperstown, NY), the Cooperstown All Star Village is the crown jewel of Youth Tournament Baseball. It welcomes all baseball teams, aged 10 and under, sanctioned, independent, travel and select. Teams compete in weekly tournaments (48 teams per week), and at the end, every team and player is inducted into the Cooperstown Youth Baseball Hall of Fame.

Exchanging trading pins are an integral part of the overall experience. It’s a fun way for players to socialize with other players, coaches and umpires.

Months before they reach Cooperstown, teams contact The Monterey Company to begin creating their trading pins. Generally, it takes three weeks to create and ship, however, teams that don’t have finished artwork may need to start earlier to develop their design.

“The bigger, the flashier and the more attractive the trading pin is, the more popular it is to trade,” said Paul Stark, president, The Monterey Company. “These pins are a great way to acknowledge your team’s accomplishments.”

The best way to make your trading pin stand out is to add accessories, such as danglers, sliders, spinners, led blinkie lights, wiggle head bobbers and glitter:

· A dangler is a secondary pin that hangs off of the main pin. Danglers are essentially a second custom made pin designed to accent the design. One popular dangler is a baseball with the year printed on it.

· Sliders are secondary pins that are attached to a main pin via a slot. It is able slide a short distance along the pin, adding movement to the design. Sliders are great for making a player slide into home base, for instance.

· A spinner is a secondary pin that is attached through a hole in the main pin and capped off, allowing it to spin freely. For instance, it can be used to create movement in the wheels of a car or a hurricane hovering over a team’s home state.

· Blinkies are a small light bulb (LED) that is placed on the pin connected to a hidden battery box attachment on the back. When turned on, the bulb begins to blink and attract attention.

· Bobble heads are the danglers of the future. A bobble-head is a secondary pin that is connected to the main pin using a spring attachment instead of a chain. The spring enables the “bobbling” action of the pin. It can be used in many designs ranging from making a player’s head bobble to having your team’s logo spring from your home state.

· With just the faintest hint of light, glitter adds an extra sparkle to your design. At .15 cents per color per location, it’s an inexpensive way to draw attention to your trading pin.

Posted: March 10th, 2008 under Lapel Pins, Trading Pins.
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At the Monterey Company, all that glitters turns to gold! Glitter is made of tiny little sequins (often the size of a pepper flake) that reflect light. Many of us have known glitter since elementary school with our craft projects or on Christmas decorations. Because of its brilliant effects, glitter is also widely used on baseball trading pins that are traded at Cooperstown, PA every year.

“The bigger, the flashier and the more attractive the trading pin is, the more popular it is to trade,” said Paul Stark, president, The Monterey Company. “At only .15 cents per pin, glitter is an inexpensive way in which teams can draw attention to their trading pins.”

Glitter is often used to set off the team’s name or to highlight its mascot. It comes in a variety of colors, including red, blue, yellow, green, orange, pink, black and white, to name a few. You don’t have to limit your glitter choices to one area. You can put glitter in as many places as you like. It costs .15 per color per area.

For example, if you wanted glitter in the sky and on the mascot on your trading pin, then it would cost .30 per pin.Anyway you look at it, all that glitters is gold. Glitter catches the sun and makes your trading pin shine! And what shines is considered valuable!

The flashier the pin, the more other team members will want to trade for it!

Posted: March 1st, 2008 under Trading Pins.
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Over the years, The Monterey Company has created hundreds of baseball trading pins for teams across the country. These are pins in which young boys and girls who make it to the nationals trade each year.

The more popular pins are the ones that have “bells and whistles,” such as blinking lights, glitter, sliders (baseballs or other objects that move on the pin). Of course, those cost extra and must be integrated into the design.

Generally larger trading pins the better, from 1 ½ inches to 2 inches, and etched or printed because they’re lighter weight.

Posted: February 15th, 2008 under Trading Pins.
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It was a sad story. A new customer called and said that he wanted a bigger trading pin this year. It had to be two inches–no less. When his softball team went to the finals last year, they had a 1-inch trading pin. It showed a screaming softball with the team’s name on it. There were no “bells and whistles,” such as glitter, a slider, a dangler or blinking lights. The artwork was boring, and no one wanted to trade with them, he said. He still remembers their disappointed faces.

So he asked The Monterey Company to design a new logo this year. He wanted to keep the screaming softball, but add a softball player that looked more like a Viking Super Hero. The Monterey artist knew exactly what he wanted. He created her standing tall on a Viking ship–a muscular, sassy Super Hero holding up her bat up high like a weapon.

The difference was like night and day, the customer said. Everyone was going to want to trade with his team this year, he is trying to decide where to add glitter—should it be on the ball or the girl’s cape? It really doesn’t matter. For only 15 cents a pin, glitter is the least expensive way to make a trading pin more attractive. In more ways than one, this pin is going to shine!

You can create your own super cool, attractive trading pin with us. We can start with your artwork or from scratch. All we need is an idea, the size and your team’s colors. Your artwork and revisions are free. We want to ensure that your team has tradable pins that everyone wants in their collection! There should be no more sad stories.

Posted: February 15th, 2008 under Trading Pins.
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