T-shirts are fine, I have plenty of them and keep buying them (I blame OutsideXbox and their awesome shirts) but in recent years, I’ve gotten into collecting enamel pins. PAX has a robust Pin Trading subculture and for the first time at PAX East 2022, I actually took part in in the trading aspect, realizing I didn’t have to keep every pin and every set.

Dubbed “Pinny Arcade Pin Quest”, there are official PAX only sets available for purchase at different vendor booths along with the PAX show specific pin sets. I definitely want to pick up the PAX Unplugged 2022 set and I’ve already got my eye on a few of the pins from vendors, especially Leder Games and Cookie Brigade, the PAX charity fundraising group.

Last year, I used a drawstring backpack, which was fine until I started to fill it up with things and the pin backs would get caught or start to wiggle loose with each tightening of the satchel. I almost lost a few pins while wandering around. So this year, I bought myself an ITA backpack, with little windows so if a pin pops off, it won’t be lost forever.

Here is what I have on the bag so far:

Do these pins weigh a bit? Yeah, I might not have thought this through – the mix of pins, water bottles and eventual board games means this backpack might end up feeling heavy pretty quick. But look at my pins! It’s all worth it to show off this ridiculous collection.