Project record
The players voted — and picked the pin with all their numbers on it
A 13U AA team let its own players choose the final artwork, then turned down a spinner upgrade to keep every jersey number on the pin.
Philadelphia · PA · Delaware Valley · 13U AA
- Quantity
- 250 pins
- Size
- 2.5"
- Process
- soft enamel
- Proof rounds
- 4
- Inquiry to ship
- 20 days
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
The team that let its 13-year-olds vote on the final artwork — and turned down a spinner upgrade to put every player's number on the pin instead.
How the design got made
- Beat 1Paid-search inquiry from a phone at 7:53 PM with minimal spec
- Beat 2Rep ran an eight-question intake before commissioning any art
- Beat 3Customer floated the shape of Pennsylvania; ended up choosing a Philadelphia wordmark
- Beat 4American flag added to the skater's helmet on request
- Beat 5A season mark that read too large — rep misread the ask, fixed it same day
- Beat 6The players themselves picked the winning design: the one with all their numbers
- Beat 7Spinner upgrade quoted honestly at +$0.65/pin and declined
- Beat 8Quantity went UP from 200 to 250 as the per-pin price came down
The full account
Eight questions before any artwork
The inquiry arrived from a phone at 7:53 on a Tuesday evening through a paid search ad. It carried a size, two colours and a quantity, and nothing else.
Rather than send it straight to an artist, the reply was a list of questions: age group, event, whether they wanted the state shape or just the letters, glitter or slider or spinner, and whether they wanted player numbers — and if so, send them.
The answers came back the next morning with all fifteen jersey numbers, an age group of 13U AA, and a clear no on the add-ons. One round of questions saved two rounds of proofs.
Four rounds, and a customer who knew what she wanted
Round one — two concepts. The response reshaped the identity of the pin: drop the state, add 13U AA, and change the wordmark from "Blazers Hockey" to Philadelphia Blazers. Also, could the skater have an American flag on his helmet?
Round two — the season mark read too heavy. The request was to move it and shrink it. That got misread as shrinking the whole pin, and the reply came back in one line: "Not make the pin smaller, just the 25/26." Corrected the same afternoon.
Round three — the players chose:
"The players decided on the one with all their #'s."
Round four — approved.
The upgrade they said no to
Partway through, the customer asked about making the stick and puck a slider, and what that would cost.
The honest answer was that the stick and puck couldn't carry it — a moving element needs solid metal around its anchor or it won't survive handling. The counter-proposal was to spin the round logo in the centre instead, quoted both ways at 250 pins:
- Without spinner — $3.44 per pin
- With spinner — $4.09 per pin
She passed, and put the sixty-five cents into keeping every player's number on the face instead. In the same exchange the order went up from 200 to 250, because the larger quantity brought the per-pin price down.
Where the team is actually from
The form said Philadelphia. The address is in Bucks County, about twenty miles out.
Both are true, and the customer settled it herself when she asked for the pin to read Philadelphia Blazers. The team's identity is Philadelphia. That's what goes on the pin, and that's what goes on this page.
Specification
| Team | Philadelphia Blazers |
|---|---|
| Sport | Hockey |
| Level | AA travel |
| Age group | 13U AA |
| Quantity | 250 |
| Size | 2.5" |
| Process | soft enamel |
| Colours | orange, black |
| Banner included | No |
| Event confirmed | Not confirmed |
| City | Philadelphia |
| State | PA |
| Region | Delaware Valley |
| Inquiry | 2025-12-02 |
| Artwork approved | 2025-12-06 |
| Shipped | 2025-12-22 |
| Deadline | 2026-01-10 |
| Beat deadline by | 19 days |
| Proof rounds | 4 |
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
No publishable customer sentence exists in this order thread, so none is shown. Everything below the header on this page is drawn from the order record itself: sizes, quantities, proof rounds and dates. Nothing here is a testimonial, and we do not write one.
Questions this order answers
A spinner is a separate element mounted on a rivet so it rotates in place — usually a logo, a puck, or a ball. It reads as a fidget as much as a badge, which is exactly why players trade for them.
On a 2.5-inch soft enamel order, adding a spinner moved the price from $3.44 to $4.09 per pin at 250 pieces — about 65 cents. That team spent the difference on putting every player's number on the pin instead.
Sourced — Philadelphia 13U AA order, December 2025
No, and it's worth knowing before you fall in love with a layout. A moving element needs enough solid metal around its anchor point to survive being handled. Thin, spindly shapes won't hold.
On one hockey design the customer asked to make the stick-and-puck a slider. The answer was that the blade and puck couldn't carry it, with a counter-proposal to spin the round logo in the centre instead. Round, chunky, central elements move; delicate outlying ones don't.
The same constraint applies to fine cut-outs. A multi-piece design with lots of small connecting bridges gets flagged in production before it's ever tooled — one puzzle-piece pin set had to be re-engineered because, in the shop's words, it would 'never hold up in production.'
Sourced — Two 2025 orders — production art direction
Soft enamel leaves the colour slightly recessed below the metal lines, so you can feel the design. It's the standard for trading pins and it's what nearly every order here uses.
Hard enamel is polished flat and level with the metal for a smoother, dressier finish. It costs more and loses the tactile quality that makes trading pins feel like trading pins.
Partly sourced — Soft enamel confirmed across orders. Hard enamel pricing NEEDS TPC CONFIRMATION.
Two inches or larger is the working floor for tournament trading — smaller pins get passed over. Sizes run from 2 inches up to 6.
One little league's four orders across three years show the migration in practice: they started at 1.25 inches and moved to 2.0. Larger sizes also unlock the banner threshold, which is why the bigger pin often costs less in total.
Sourced — Sizing guidance across multiple orders; Northern Virginia little league, 2022–2026
Yes, and it's one of the most requested features — teams routinely choose it over a spinner or slider upgrade when they have to pick one.
Numbers need contrast to stay legible at pin scale. White numbers on a dark element such as a black puck is a reliable pattern. Send the full roster with numbers when you send artwork, and tell us straight away if the roster changes.
Sourced — Multiple 2025–26 orders