Disney Memorabilia

With the heightened popularity of Disney Pins, I thought I would take a moment to look back at the beginnings of this particular niche of memorabilia.  The first Disney pins were produced in the early 1930’s and were primarily used to promote the series of Mickey movies that were running at the time.  These pins were manufactured with traditional button-making design – a lithograph image wrapped around a coin-sized metal and mechanically pressed.

The rarest of these antique pins is the 1930 “Courier”, which was actually a Celo button with a paper backing.  These pins were distributed exclusively to members of the Mickey Mouse Cub.  Each branch of the Mickey Mouse Club had nine officers who led each branch.  The term “Courier” represents one of the officer positions.  The role of this person was to handle all correspondences for the chapter.  Other officer positions include; Chief Mickey, Chief Minnie, Master of Ceremonies, Cheerleader, Songleader,  two Sergeant at Arms, Colorbearer, and Courier.  Despite the massive popularity of the Mickey Mouse Club, there are no known collections of all nine officer pins.  Because of this, the Courier pin has been crowned the “King of all Disney Pins” since it has the most recent verifiable sale price of $4071.