My pin display dilemma by Toën Feyen

Since I´ve been a Koipin collector I often encountered a problem, which maybe some more people come up with. One way or the other you’ll have to display your pins. Because putting them in some sort of plastic bag and every now and then taking them out to look at them is not the best way. Not only for yourself but it also does not make your pins look nicer by time.

I personally started to put them on my cap. But after some time I got a headache wearing that cap. As all those pins started to get heavy. So onto another solution.

Then I saw people, mostly British, wearing them on a vest. Ok this is of course a great way of displaying them. But it was not my idea of walking around, as I’m very careful with my collection. I always would be watching if all the pins were on it. And I think at a Koishow the most important thing is to look at the Koi and not if you are loosing pins……………

I also encountered people pinning the pins on a towel, and carrying them around. This is of course a good way of doing it. But then another problem comes around. Which in all following kinds of displaying will come up. As I always like to display the pins from one particular club or country together. You do have a problem as you get a new pin of that country. As you will often have to reorder them all. Besides a towel is I think for in the bathroom or for on the beach. Not for pins.

 

Then I used a piece of cloth. Having my wife sewing the sides. And enclosed a small bamboo stick at the top and the bottom to allow the cloth hanging straight down. After that I pinned all the pins on it. But of course the piece of cloth was quickly too small. So I had to find another solution.

I found the solution in 3D frames. Over here in Holland you can buy them and put some stuff in it to make it look like a 3D wall decoration. In these I hung a piece of black velvet on which I pinned the pins. It looked nice but the only problem was pinning the pins in a straight line. For the pins with just the one pin at the back it wasn’t a problem. But for the ones (mostly UK badges) that have a different fixing at the backside, it is hard to pin them neatly next to each other. On the other hand. When I got a new pin from some particularly club I often had to reorder the whole collection again. Which as you can imagine is one Hell of a job. So I still was looking for another solution.

 

That solution came up with the memorable pin set of the MAKC. They did put the complete collection in a perspex box on top of some foam. So now you just had to lay the pins on the foam and close the perspex box. This was an easy way of doing that. So I ordered some of these empty boxes. And again I was satisfied for a time. But after some while I again encountered a problem. About 400 plus pins are taking one hell of a space. And my office was soon too small as there is more Koi related stuff on the walls.

In the end I found the solution which was offered to me by Vincent Chiu from Taiwan who again got the solution from somebody else. He showed me a ring binder case which you could close with a zipper. In the case you had several pieces of cardboard and between each of them you put a piece of cloth. On these cardboards you stick your pins and if you run out of space you can extend at any moment by just putting another piece of cardboard in between. You can also leave spaces open for pins you don’t have yet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In this way I now have all my pins displayed on cardboard and filed in four ring binder cases. Of course you always can use other ring binders without zipper. But there could be a problem with those , if one of the pins came loose and fell out. In my case the pins stay in the binder and only come when open the zipper.

I hope you maybe also found a solution now.

Toën Feyen