Fewer pins, bigger pin.

The trade most teams make backwards

The opening option was the conventional one: 1.5 inch, 150 pins, $2.33 each. Smaller pin, more of them, better unit rate.

Price shown is what this order was quoted at, for this quantity, size and specification, on this date. It is not a current price list.

They went the other way. 2.25 inch, 125 pins.

Fewer pins, each one substantially larger — two and a quarter inches is more than twice the face area of an inch and a half. Every dollar that would have bought extra pins bought a bigger pin instead.

When that is the right call

It depends entirely on what the pin is for.

If the pin is currency — a Cooperstown week, a tournament with a hundred teams trading constantly — you need volume, and a small pin that you have plenty of beats a large one you run out of on day two.

If the pin is a keepsake, for a roster and their families and a few coaches, quantity stops mattering and the object itself is the whole point. A 2.25 inch pin has room for detail that a 1.5 inch pin simply cannot hold: a full crest rather than a simplified one, readable text, colour separations that don't merge.

At 125 pins nothing is being optimised for cost. Every fixed cost — mould, set-up, freight — is spread across a small number no matter what, so the marginal decision is purely what should this look like.

Three proof rounds

The design went to V3C — three rounds — with the rep asking for a photograph of the uniform before proofing began, to get the colours matched rather than approximated.

The pace

First contact 31 January, quoted 3 February, ordered on the 5th, in country by the 20th, delivered the 26th. A rush order with a genuinely tight window.

Why this one is here

As the counterexample. Most of this library is teams working out how to get more pins for less money. This is a team deciding that fewer, better pins was the right answer — and it is, for what they were making.