Anastasia with the "Pin Father" Mike Krahulik (2016)

About The PinnyPals Gazette

Hi! I’m Anastasia “Luckycharm” Cooper, the person behind organizing The PinnyPals Gazette.

I’ve been part of the Pinny Arcade community since the very beginning of PAX Aus, although becoming a pin collector was completely accidental.

My First Pin

It was PAX Aus 2013, the first PAX ever held in Australia. I had never been to a convention like it before. It was at the Melbourne Showgrounds, it was raining, and my partner and I couldn't get into the opening Keynote panel because there wasn't enough room.

So we figured we’d head to Main Merch and buy our loot before the lines got too long.

While I was waiting, I saw the pins.

And I wasn't interested.

Seriously. Nothing.

But our merchandise came to just under $200, and there was a promotion where you received a free Merch 1.0 pin if you spent $100. Since we were already so close to $200, I bought two sets of the PAX Aus 2013 pins and a set of the basic Core pins to push us over.

Later, sitting on the beanbags at PAX, I started putting those pins onto my lanyard.

And something clicked.

There was something about the physical act of putting them on the lanyard and looking at them that brought me an absolutely ridiculous amount of joy.

Even today, I can't properly explain why I love Pinny Arcade so much.

And it really is just Pinny Arcade. I don't collect other kinds of pins. Apparently my brain has decided these particular tiny pieces of metal are special.

Then I learnt the lore behind Merch — how he loves you when you buy merchandise, but when you don't, he turns into Flesh Reaper. The silliness of the comics and the characters completely connected with my personality. (Original Penny Arcade comic that explains this)

And that was it.

My Pinny journey had begun entirely by accident.

Thirteen years, more than 2,000 pins and more money than I care to admit later... here we are.

But It Wasn't Just the Pins

During that PAX AUS 2013 weekend, I found out that there were 5 other pins that had been given out/sold at the PAX East earlier that year and I had to try to find them. And I wasn’t the only one looking for them. There was a community member with a large sign saying they would do anything for East Pins. And every time they saw me, they would beeline to my lanyard and ask if I was willing to trade for a cookie, money, his future first born. It was so amusing that 2 complete strangers would bond over these pins, but we did. We are still friends today. And that is what I think kept me in the hobby and not just a passing fad, the people in the community. People would plan meetups in between the PAX’s, people made their own websites to keep track of the pins, to trade, to communicate. I loved it, to be a part of a group that bonded over something so simple. I wanted to be more active and help others.

In 2015, I started offering my services as a PAX Aus proxy, helping collectors who couldn't make it to Australia get their hands on pins from the show. Australia is truly on the other side of the globe, and many of the American community members would never be able to have the time or money to travel to Melbourne.

PAX Aus 2026 will make ten years that I've proxied for the community, and I've never regretted doing it.

Being in Australia can make the much larger US Pinny community feel a very long way away. I've only managed to attend PAX South in the US twice, but proxying has allowed me to build friendships and connections with collectors on the other side of the world and feel like I'm genuinely part of that community.

I've also had the opportunity to be part of the Pinny Community Panel 4 times, talking about this ridiculous hobby we love and, even better, meeting new people who are just discovering it.

Those connections became just as important to me as the collection itself.

PAX AUS Pinny Panel - 2023(?)

PAX AUS Pinny Panel - 2018(?)

Why The PinnyPals Gazette?

That's really where The PinnyPals Gazette comes from.

After thirteen years, I've watched pins appear, disappear, become grails, get forgotten and suddenly become important again. I've watched traditions develop, community jokes take on lives of their own, people go to absurd lengths for a time sink, and complete strangers become friends because one of them spotted a pin on the other's lanyard.

There are the pins themselves, of course — the artwork, the hunt, the trades, the blind boxes and that feeling when you finally find the one you've been looking for.

But there are also all the stories surrounding them.

I don't want those stories to disappear.

The Gazette is my attempt to preserve some of them while also creating something useful for the community we have now.

You'll find Pinny news, PAX coverage, pin spotlights, community resources and stories from collectors. I also want this to be somewhere a person can arrive after discovering their first Pinny at PAX and find out what on earth they've just stumbled into.

Because I know exactly how that feels.

I wasn't planning to become a Pinny collector either.

Look how that turned out.

Outside the Pin World

Other than collecting pins and curating the PinnyPals Gazette, I am a High School teacher at a special needs school in Perth, Western Australia. My classes include English, Social Studies, Driving Theory, Film Study and Just Dance as a sports class. My students come from all walks of life and have a number of needs, both diagnosed and undiagnosed which requires me to build my lessons to be flexible, teach multiple different ways and maintain routine. And to build connections to make my classroom a safe place.

At home, I am a mother of 2 great kids who keep me on my toes and who are now old enough to come to PAX themselves and see where I go every October for a few days.

PAX AUS 2015 & son

Us with Great-Grandma (103 years old) (2026)

Under Construction