Pin and Keychain Grading: Mangamon Quality Standards

Pin grading isn’t universally practiced by all artists; it varies among creators. Each artist adopts their own grading scale, with some being lenient and others stringent. It’s crucial to acknowledge that all pins are handmade, and perfection is unattainable. Minor variations may occur from one unit to another. Here’s how we grade our pins:

How We Inspect Our Pins and Keychains:

We meticulously examine our pins/keychains in either natural sunlight or under a bright lamp. We scrutinize the surface for gouges, low fill, scratches, scuffing, and more. We check the sides for missing plating areas. Finally, we inspect the back to ensure secure posts and our backstamp and limited edition numbering (if any) are present.

While we grade pins/keychains by hand, some mistakes can happen. Pins being handmade means no pin is perfect, and grading is subjective, varying among artists. We uphold a fairly strict grading system as below. However sometimes the odd pin may accidentally be graded incorrectly. If you believe you bought an A-Grade pin/keychain that should be B or even C-Grade, please email us and let us know! We will replace it for you.

A-Grade:

Generally, these pins/keychains have almost no minor blemishes or flaws, noticeable only really up close and under bright light. Examples include light enamel underfill, minor metal plating imperfections, minor surface scuffing, and minor paint pooling on screen-printed pins.

B-Grade:

B Grade pins/keychains have noticeable flaws under light. Some have more significant blemishes than others. Flaws include noticeable underfilled enamel, scuffed enamel or metal, imperfections on metal plating, large air bubbles in enamel, small nicks on enamel. Generally these pins and keychains are almost A-Grade, but would not be for every collector.

B-Grades can serve as display pieces or for wear if minor blemishes are acceptable.

C-Grade/Free Grade:

Pins/keychains in this category have multiple and very obvious defects, noticeable at arm’s length under normal lighting conditions. These prevent them from being sold. We will use C-Grade pins for free giveaways!