Enamel pins come in either hard or soft enamel. Hard enamel, is a metal, painted pin with a totally flat surface, where as soft enamel you can feel the metal ridges in which the paint is inlaid.
Soft enamel is the most common type of pin that is traded amongst sports teams. You can add danglers, spinners, sliders, blinking LED lights, glitter, or glow as well as change the plating or enamel to make it special.
Make it stand out
Glitter comes in all different colors and adds a bit of sparkle to your pin. Glitter is placed on top of the enamel.
Glitter
Spinners are a secondary level, with a pillar through the base main pin layer, that allows the piece to spin on top of the main pin.
Spinners
LE pins are a popular choice to create a limited edition pin, because it allows the use of the same mold which cuts down on the cost while still looking rare. You can use a different plating, glitter, glow, or just different colors to make it stand out from your regular team pin.
Limited Enamel
Dyed metal plating allows for the entire pin to become a different color than the standard metallic plating options. These are a matte finish.
Dyed Metal
Glow in the dark pigment can be added to enamel to make the enamel glow in the dark. The glow may alter the color of the enamel slightly.
Glow
Sliders are a secondary level attached by a pillar that slides (and spins) along a cut out path on the base layer pin.
Sliders
Diestruck pins are all metal with no enamel. A lot of teams will create a diestruck version of their main pin as their rare pin because it’s cost effective.
Diestruck
UV print on soft enamel allows for more details, specific gradients or small details to be put on enamel pins and coins. In the examples, the face on the middle of the coin is UV printed, as well as the lens gradient and logo detail on the sunglasses, while the rest is enamel.
UV Print
Blinking LED lights can be added to the pin, powered by a small battery adhered to the back of the pin with and on/off button. These lights blink and come in various colors.