Project record
Two orders, two years, one jersey number in common
A Philadelphia 12U program ordered in 2024 and again in 2026. Between the two rosters, exactly one number repeats — and the account stayed anyway.
Elkins Park · PA · Philadelphia · 12U
Gallery
Image frames are in place with their final filenames and alt text. The binaries are held pending rights clearance and a minors review; dropping them in is a data change.
The brief
Two orders, two years apart, and only one jersey number in common — the roster turned over almost entirely and the account stayed.
How the design got made
- Beat 12024: 13 players, 3 coaches. Banner included free with the pin purchase
- Beat 2Customer asked plainly — 'Banner comes with the pins purchase?' — and the answer was 'that is correct it is a FREE banner'
- Beat 3 · pivot2026: 14 players, 4 coaches. Only jersey a player's number appears on both rosters
- Beat 4Banner blind-shipped direct to the customer from a separate print vendor
- Beat 5 · pivotMid-2026 the artist asked to start receiving banner proofs from other artists too — a process change visible in the thread
The full account
What youth sports does to a customer list
Put the 2024 roster next to the 2026 roster for this program and you find one jersey number on both. Thirteen players became fourteen players, and they're almost entirely different kids.
By any normal read of a customer list, that account should have evaporated. It didn't. It ordered again, bigger, with the banner.
The reason is the part that doesn't show up in a roster: the same coach was there both times. The kids age out. The adult who knows where the pins come from doesn't — and when they do step back, they tend to hand the vendor to whoever picks up the clipboard next.
2024: the banner question
The first order came with a banner, and the customer wasn't sure that was real:
"Banner comes with the pins purchase?"
"that is correct it is a FREE banner"
It's a fair question to ask twice. The banner isn't a discount or a promotion — it's what happens above a size and quantity threshold, and it ships blind, direct, with tracking passed back.
2026: same program, new team
Two years later: fourteen players, four coaches, a new design, another banner. The order ran past two thousand dollars.
The artwork process had matured too. By 2026 the shop had started pulling banner proofs from more than one artist rather than routing everything through a single hand — a small change that shows up in the thread as a request from the artist themselves.
What to take from it
If you run a program rather than a team, the useful thing here isn't the pin. It's that your design files outlive your roster. A second order that starts from an existing design is faster and cheaper than one that starts from a blank page, and a reorder on the same die skips the mould charge entirely.
Keep the artwork. Hand it over with the clipboard.
Specification
| Team | Anderson Monarchs |
|---|---|
| Sport | Baseball |
| Age group | 12U |
| City | Elkins Park |
| State | PA |
| Region | Philadelphia |
| Multi-year account | Yes |
The banner threshold
This order sat under the threshold, so no banner was included. The line falls at 1,000 pins at 2.0 inches or larger: at that point the size step costs $0.20 more per pin — $1.07 to $1.27 — and brings a free 3ft × 6ft banner plus 100 bonus gold-metal or blackout pins with it.
Worth checking before you commit to a quantity: the bigger pin is frequently the cheaper total order.
What the customer said
“Very nice and Thank you.”
Customer, Anderson Monarchs · 2024-04-19 · on the banner proof
Questions this order answers
The account usually survives it. One Philadelphia program's 2024 and 2026 orders share exactly one jersey number between them — the roster turned over almost completely and the program kept ordering, because the same coach stayed.
A Northern Virginia little league went further: the person doing the buying changed entirely between 2023 and 2026, and the account continued anyway. Keeping artwork files on record is what makes the second order faster than the first.
Sourced — Anderson Monarchs 2024/2026; ANSLL 2022–2026
Say so up front. Artwork is kept on file, so a repeat order can start from your existing design instead of a blank page, and a reorder that reuses the same die skips the mould charge.
Several accounts here have ordered across two, three and four seasons — and reference to a previous pin is often the fastest way to explain what you want.
Sourced — Multiple repeat accounts, 2022–2026
Either. Orders ship direct to whoever you nominate, and banners ship blind — no vendor branding on the parcel — with tracking passed back to you.
Sourced — Banner purchase orders, 2024 and 2026