Throughout the day, far from the noise and buzz of registration and the exhibition hall at the San Diego Convention Center, men and women emptied Ziploc bags, canvas pouches and sometimes backpacks onto a horseshoe of card tables. Dozens of colorfully enameled pins and challenge coins from all parts of the Brotherhood spilled out on the white tablecloth.
And then the trading, and trading stories, began anew.
The constant question was “Pin or coin?”
It was coins for Daniel Marrero from Hamlet, N.C., Local 1923.
“Pins are more fragile. Coins have two sides, so you can display them however you want. I love pins. Don’t get me wrong. I was on the road for 10 years, and I would always buy a pin when I went to a new hall. But in the end, coins are just easier to carry,” he said during the weekend before the opening of the 41st IBEW Internationlal Convention.
Brett Schuler from Knoxville, Tenn., Local 760 prefers pins.
“I was on the road for eight years living in a camper, and the coins just sat in a bag. The pins could come out. Now I’m in the office, so coins and pins are no different, but I still prefer the pins,” he said.
In the end, while at the table, they both traded for both types of collectibles.
“It’s such a good ice-breaker at a progress meeting or on a job. You trade pins, and you have something in common immediately. You wear your pin or pull out a coin from your home local, and you can show who you are,” Schuler said.
Schuler is always on the lookout for anything with Reddy Kilowatt — the lightbulb-nosed lightning-bolt cartoon mascot of the power industry — or “danglers,” large, multi-part pins with additional enameled pieces, usually connected by delicate chains.
Some locals go all in. Portland, Ore., Local 48 created a near-full-size, but flat, Nintendo cartridge that weighs well over a pound. Travis Sellers, business manager of Kennewick, Wash., Local 112, came with multiple four-piece sets of “Fat Man”-themed coins, honoring the local’s role in refining the plutonium used in the second bomb dropped on Japan, ending World War II.
Marrero looks for a pin or coin that says something special about where the local is. Wilmington, N.C., for example, has a challenge coin featuring the Venus fly trap, the famously carnivorous plant native to the Carolina swamps.
But then he reached into his pocket, pulled out a coin with a longhorn skull from Houston Local 716 with a free-turning rim.
“Fidget spinner,” he said, smiling.
The group of six people stopped negotiating swaps and looked at the edge glinting in the San Diego sunlight. They all smiled and nodded. Someone said, “Cool.”
Then they turned back to the table, picking, trading and telling stories again.
