……..The May long weekend has ended, and that means Otafest is now over. 🙁 *spams sad faces all over the blog post*
Hey, we still have Otafest Aurora this year, so maybe I should be actively spamming happy faces all over this post.
As I took advantage of being a volunteer this year, the one thing I was the most intrigued about was pin trading! (No, I know you wanted to say it was probably trying to figure out where the crowds were all heading to, but just no)
Pins, pins, and more pins – if you attended Otafest this year, you’ve probably seen the countless lanyards dressed up with various pins from this year’s trading selection. On Friday, I had no idea of the crazy trading going on and wondered why people “stared” at my volunteer tag the most (did my name matter that much?); on Sunday, I was one of those people eyeing others for their pins!
The wide majority of the pins were of course designs of Persephone, “Seph”, Otafest’s revered mascot since day one, and Aurora, a much newer representative for its namesake winter counterpart! (Did you know Persephone and Aurora have their own Twitter accounts too? @Otafest and @OtafestAurora it is!)
Many pins were available for purchase for $5, such as the maid pin on my lanyard in the picture above, but certain ones were designated as “staff pins”, which meant these pins were only available through trading. That meant people trying to chase down executives by their red shirts to see what they carried on their lanyards.
And if you thought the shine looked different on each pin, that’s right – there were both gold and silver pins! (Gold volunteer pins were especially super rare)
If trying to find “staff pins” from Otafest executives seem hard, there are those avid collectors as well – I got my Otafest 15-year anniversary pin by trading with a fellow that had 3 full collections of these pins!
Yep, if you think three pins is plenty, then look at this:
Pins, pins, and more pins! The designs are one of the reasons I’m VERY stoked for Otafest Aurora this year on November 30th, as you can probably tell now. Collector’s addiction, here I come! 😀
