I'm excited to share with you all that I received the bulk shipment of Short Circuit pins this week and began the process of grading and carding them!!
Behold, here's what 3050 enamel pins looks like:
Our living room belongs to the pins now.
And here's a short video clip showcasing one of each bot board design on their backing cards:
Springing for the laminated foil overprint on the cards was absolutely the right decision, they look absolutely gorgeous with the pins. There was a bit of a hiccup in file formatting which meant I initially received all the Earth cards without foil, so I reordered them - an extra cost, but absolutely worth it for how the whole aesthetic comes together! The new backing cards arrived within just a couple days of the pins themselves, so it all worked out.
The stickers are also on their way! Bird Bot Print Shop sent me lovely photos of the fat stacks of shiny to share with you all, and I received shipment notice yesterday.
The whole crew in large sticky form!
I'm unreasonably excited for these sticker sheets y'allemaal 👀
I've also received a huge bundle of shipping boxes, and after that we're just waiting on the shiny baggies I ordered to protect the pins in style when I pack 'em up.
In the meantime, the intensive process of pin grading is underway. For those less familiar with enamel pins, grading involves checking each pin for deviations from the expected quality, also called Standard or A-grade.
Gotta check 'em all!
Enamel pins are ultimately a handmade item, as many parts of the process such as polishing and filling in the enamel paint are not handled by machines. Thus, some small level of variation is expected and rarely are pins "perfect", but flaws such as underfills, bigger scuffs, excessive bubbling in the metal plating, incorrect color fills, or missing enamel all classify pins as Seconds, B-grade or lower.
Carded Standard A-Grade Byte
I've finished my first pass examination of Byte (wolf) and Hex (goat) and am bummed to say the B-grade rate is much higher than expected for both. HOWEVER fear not: fortunately, I still have enough standard grade to fulfill Backerkit orders! Peep the beautiful pins above and below. <3
Carded Standard A-Grade Hex
I've documented the issues and sent them to my manufacturer to try and arrange replacements, as I planned to have more standard grade pins for conventions and such. If for some reason I come across a design where there are not enough standard grade to fulfill orders, I will let you all know right away and contact those impacted, but I'm hopeful that our luck will hold out! I'm now about halfway through grading RAID (tiger) and so far those buddies are almost all looking amazing, which is the quality I expected.
The grading, carding, and packing for the 335 of you will be quite an undertaking, but so far we're on track to have everything sent out by the end of July as planned. I'll push more updates your way as the process progresses. Have a fantastic weekend all!
