How to Identify an Official Blizzard Pin

For BlizzardItems, we use a simple definition:

That gives us two major categories of official pins.

The key word is authorized.

It isn't about which factory made the pin. It's about whether Blizzard Entertainment authorized the product.

A fan-made pin is created independently by an artist or company using characters, imagery, themes, or inspiration from Blizzard games without being part of Blizzard's official collectible program or an officially licensed Blizzard product line.

And there are some really good fan-made pins.

Teaberry House, also associated with the artist Tsepish, is one of the better-known examples within the Warcraft collecting community.

Their designs include Warcraft characters, pets, mounts, creatures, and other game-inspired artwork.

Many Blizzard collectors own them.

Some actively collect them.

They can be beautifully designed, professionally manufactured, limited in quantity, and highly desirable.

But unless a particular release was officially licensed by Blizzard, it is still a fan-made pin, not an official Blizzard pin.

That distinction isn't a criticism of the artwork.

It's simply a classification.

This distinction is important.

A fan artist creating their own interpretation of a Warcraft character is very different from someone deliberately manufacturing a copy of an existing Blizzard pin and trying to pass it off as genuine.

A collector may knowingly pay good money for a fan-made Teaberry House pin because they love the artwork.

There's nothing confusing about that if everyone knows what it is.

The problem comes when an unofficial or counterfeit pin is represented as an official Blizzard release.

Unfortunately, there isn't one magic test.

You can't simply look at the front of every pin and instantly know whether it's official.

Instead, identification usually comes from combining several clues.

This is usually one of the first things you should do.

Flip it over.

Official Blizzard pins frequently contain clues such as:

• Blizzard Entertainment markings
• Blizzard logo or copyright information
• Game or franchise copyright information
• Manufacturer information
• Licensing information
• Series or product markings
• Edition information

The exact markings vary considerably by era and manufacturer.

Official merchandise often includes some form of copyright, trademark, manufacturer, or licensing information.

You may see wording associated with Blizzard Entertainment or the relevant game or franchise.

Officially licensed merchandise may also identify the company that manufactured the product.

Use those markings as evidence, not as the only test.

If the pin still has its original packaging or backing card, identification can become much easier.

Look for:

• Blizzard branding
• Blizzard Gear branding
• BlizzCon branding
• Official game logos
• Copyright notices
• Licensed manufacturer information
• Product labels
• UPC or SKU information

Original packaging can also help identify where a pin came from, which is often just as useful as identifying the design itself.

Of course, plenty of genuine pins have long since been separated from their packaging.

Missing packaging does not mean the pin is unofficial.

This is one of the strongest pieces of evidence.

How was this pin originally distributed?

Maybe it came from:

• A Blizzard Gear Store purchase
• BlizzCon
• A Blizzard collectible pin series
• San Diego Comic-Con
• PAX
• Gamescom
• An esports event
• A collector's edition
• An employee program
• A Blizzard promotional event
• An officially licensed merchandise company

If you can establish the original source, identification becomes much easier.

That's why BlizzardItems tracks Originally Obtained From whenever we know it.

This is one of the reasons we built BlizzardItems.

If you have a pin you don't recognize, search for it.

Try:

• Character name
• Franchise
• Series
• Event
• Logo
• Approximate year

If you find a matching design, compare:

• Image
• Release date
• Series
• Rarity
• Originally obtained from
• Description
• Other known information

If the exact pin exists in the BlizzardItems database, that's a very strong starting point because our pin catalog is focused on official Blizzard and officially licensed releases.

This is especially important when shopping through online marketplaces.

A listing called:

"RARE WORLD OF WARCRAFT BLIZZARD PIN"

doesn't establish anything.

Sellers may use words like:

• Blizzard
• Warcraft
• WoW
• Diablo
• Overwatch
• Official
• Rare
• Limited

because those words help people find the listing.

Sometimes the seller genuinely doesn't know what they have.

Sometimes they copied another listing.

Sometimes they're using "Blizzard pin" simply to mean a pin featuring something from a Blizzard game.

Always look beyond the title.

As you spend more time collecting, you'll start recognizing certain fan artists and manufacturers.

Teaberry House / Tsepish is a good example.

Their Warcraft-inspired pins have a distinct artistic style and are popular within the fan community.

Seeing one doesn't mean:

"Oh, that's fake."

It means:

"That's a Teaberry House fan-made pin."

Learning the fan-made side of the hobby can actually make you better at identifying official pins, because you'll start recognizing which designs belong to which creators.

You may eventually look at a pin and think:

"That doesn't look like a Blizzard pin."

Maybe.

But Blizzard has released pins over many years, through many manufacturers, events, promotions, and licensing partners.

The styles vary enormously.

Meanwhile, fan-made artists can produce pins at extremely high manufacturing quality.

This is probably the area that causes the most confusion.

Imagine a pin wasn't sold by Blizzard Gear.

It wasn't part of Blizzard's numbered pin program.

It wasn't sold at BlizzCon.

But another company produced it under a legitimate Blizzard Entertainment license.

Is it official?

Yes.

For BlizzardItems, authorization is what matters.

If Blizzard licensed the product, it belongs in the official collectible universe.

Packaging, copyright markings, archived product listings, catalogs, manufacturer information, and other documentation can help establish whether a third-party product was officially licensed.

Not every official Blizzard pin was something you could buy.

Pins have been distributed through:

• Booth activities
• Game demos
• Promotional events
• Press events
• Esports competitions
• Employee programs
• Convention giveaways

Some of these can be harder to document because they never had a normal retail product page.

That's where provenance becomes important.

If we can document that Blizzard or an authorized partner distributed the pin through an official event, that's meaningful evidence.

Employee pins can be some of the hardest items to identify.

They may have been created for:

• Internal teams
• Employee anniversaries
• Game launches
• Company events
• Holiday gifts
• Recognition programs
• Internal celebrations

Some were never intended for public sale, which means documentation may be limited.

For BlizzardItems, we try to distinguish between:

If something is believed to be an employee item but we can't fully verify the history, we would rather say that than pretend certainty exists.

As collectible values rise, reproductions become more important to watch for.

A counterfeit attempts to imitate an existing official Blizzard pin.

Potential warning signs can include:

• Incorrect colors
• Poor enamel work
• Wrong metal finish
• Incorrect size
• Missing or incorrect back markings
• Strange fonts
• Low-quality printing
• Incorrect packaging
• Differences from known genuine examples

This point deserves emphasis.

"This isn't an official Blizzard pin"

does not mean:

"This isn't worth collecting."

Those are completely different statements.

Independent artists have created some fantastic Blizzard-inspired pins.

Collectors may seek particular artists, limited releases, character sets, color variants, or discontinued designs.

Teaberry House is a good example of how a fan-made pin line can develop its own collector following.

Some collectors maintain separate displays:

Others mix everything together.

Both approaches are fine.

Just know what you're collecting.

A professionally manufactured Arthas pin created by an independent artist can be beautiful, valuable, collectible, limited, and hard to find.

Collectors can love it.

Collectors can trade it.

Collectors can pay serious money for it.

But unless Blizzard authorized the product, it isn't an official Blizzard pin.

And that's perfectly okay.

It simply belongs to a different part of the collecting world.

If you're still getting familiar with Blizzard pin collecting, our beginner guide covers series, rarity, value, exclusives, storage, and building a collection.

Don't think of official and fan-made as:

good versus bad.

Think of them as:

different categories with different histories.

An official Blizzard pin tells part of the story of Blizzard's merchandise, events, employees, games, and licensing history.

A fan-made pin tells part of the story of the community and the artists inspired by those games.

Both can be worth collecting.

The important thing is knowing which one you're holding.

And once you can do that?

You're no longer just looking at pins.

You're identifying them.

— BlizzardItems