Why Are Enamel Pins So Expensive? A Pin Maker Explains

Enamel pins are expensive in small runs because every design needs its own custom die, plus artwork, setup and hand-filled enamel, and those costs are the same whether you make 50 pins or 5,000. Spread over 100 pins, they're heavy. Spread over 1,000, they almost disappear. The metal in a pin is the cheap part.

We make custom pins, so we hear the question a lot. Sometimes it comes as a question on a quote. Sometimes it's a review. One customer on our site wrote: "A bit costly because of the exchange etc but still with it." Fair enough. So why are enamel pins so expensive, really? Here's where the money goes.

(Looking for the actual numbers for your order, by size, type and quantity? That's in how much does it cost to make enamel pins? This article explains the why.)

Why enamel pins are so expensive, in two numbers

Take our price list for a 1-inch soft enamel pin:

• 100 pins: $292
• 1,000 pins: $1,250

Between 500 and 1,000 pieces, each extra pin adds about $1.07. That's close to what the pin itself costs once everything is set up: metal, enamel, plating, a clutch and a bag.

Now go back to the 100-pin order. If each pin cost $1.07, 100 pins would come to $107. The order is $292. The other $185 or so is the one-time work that has to happen before the first pin exists, and you pay it once whether you make 100 pins or 1,000.

This is rough arithmetic on our public prices, not our factory invoice. But it shows the pattern. At 100 pieces, most of what you pay goes to making the pin possible. At 1,000, most of it goes to making the pins.

The mold: why one pin costs almost as much as fifty

Every enamel pin starts as a tool made for that design and nothing else.

A die struck pin (the kind behind most soft enamel and hard enamel pins) is made by engraving your design into a steel die, then pressing that die into a thin sheet of metal. The raised lines you feel on a soft enamel pin are the die's work. A die cast pin goes a different way. We build a custom mold and inject liquid zinc alloy into it, which is how you get inner cutouts and 3D levels.

Either way, the tool is cut once. It takes the same time and material whether it stamps 50 pins or 5,000. When we wrote the first version of this article in 2021, a typical mold cost about $50, and one custom pin would have landed around $100 once design and shipping were added. Plenty of makers still bill the mold as its own line on the quote, often with a surcharge for complex designs.

We fold the mold into the price instead of billing it separately. That's also why we have a 50-piece minimum. Below that, the tool cost lands on too few pins for the price to make sense to anyone.

The labor you don't see

A pin is small, but a person handles it many times.

Enamel is filled by hand, one color at a time, into the recessed areas between metal lines. That's why every color in an enamel design needs a metal border around it. The line holds the enamel in place. A six-color pin means six separate fills.

Then the enamel has to cure. Soft enamel is fired at a lower temperature and left sitting slightly below the metal lines, so it's quicker to produce. Hard enamel is fired at high temperatures and then polished until the enamel sits flush with the metal. That extra firing and polishing is the whole reason hard enamel costs more. On a 100-piece, 1-inch order the difference is only $9, but it grows with size and quantity.

Plating is its own step. The metal is electroplated in gold, silver, black nickel or another finish, and then every pin is checked before it's bagged. If you want to see the full sequence, how to make custom enamel pins walks through it.

Artwork and proofs: free to you, not free to make

Most of our orders start with a logo, a sketch or a photo that isn't ready to become a pin. Our design team redraws it as clean vector art, splits it into Pantone colors, sizes it, adds metal lines where colors meet, and sends you a digital proof, usually within 4 hours. Most designs are right within one or two versions. If not, we keep revising.

We don't charge for that. It still takes a designer's time, and that time is part of the one-time cost on a first order. (It's also why, if you ask for more than two or three different concepts, we may ask for a small deposit. It's credited to your order.)

Getting the pins to you

Most enamel pins sold in the US, ours included, are made overseas. Very few pins are manufactured in the United States, because labor makes domestic production expensive (who makes the best lapel pins? goes into that). Most of our orders ship straight from the factory to you. The rush orders we can turn around in under 10 days are printed pins made in our Utah office, in stock shapes.

Shipping to one US address is included in our price. It's another cost that's roughly fixed per order, and like the mold, it weighs more on 100 pins than on 1,000.

Why enamel pins are so expensive in shops

This is the other half of the question. If a pin costs about $2 to $3 to make, why are you paying $12 at a gift shop or an online store?

Because the seller paid the same one-time costs, bought a batch of 100 or so, and still has to make a living. In our guide to pricing pins for resale, a 100-pin order works out to about $2.77 per pin once setup, backer cards and shipping are counted. Double it for margin and add $7 postage, and the customer pays around $12.54. Nobody in that chain is overcharging. Small-batch retail just works that way.

Does paying less mean getting a worse pin?

Mostly, no. People are surprised by this.

The things that make a pin cost more are choices: a larger size, hard enamel instead of soft, die cast for cutouts, a magnet back, gift boxes. None of them fixes a defect in the cheaper pin. Hard enamel isn't a "better" soft enamel pin. It's a different finish, smooth and glossy instead of textured, and people split on which they like.

The one place a lower price can mean a real material difference is the base metal. Our pins are mostly iron, brass or zinc alloy, and the design decides which one we use. Once the pin is plated you can't see the difference, and iron pins hold up fine (can you wash enamel pins?). When you compare two quotes that are far apart, ask which base metal each one uses. That question explains more gaps than anything else.

What you should worry about is a low headline price with the mold, shipping and backing billed on top. That isn't a cheaper pin. It's the same pin, priced in pieces.

What actually brings the cost down

You can't avoid the one-time costs, but you can spread them further:

• Order more pieces. This does more than anything else.
• Stay near 1 inch unless the design needs more room.
• Choose soft enamel or die struck unless you want the polished finish.
• Combine designs in one order so they're priced together.
• Reorder the same design. We keep your artwork on file for 10 years.

The exact savings for each, with real prices, are in how much does it cost to make enamel pins?

FAQ

Why are hard enamel pins more expensive than soft enamel?

Hard enamel is fired at high temperatures and then polished flush with the metal lines. Soft enamel skips the polishing and cures at a lower temperature. The extra labor and time make hard enamel cost more, though the gap is small on small orders.

Why is there a minimum order for custom pins?

Because every design needs its own die or mold, and that cost doesn't shrink for small orders. Our minimum is 50 pieces. Below that, the per-pin price stops making sense.

Why do bigger pins cost more?

Each pin uses more metal and more enamel, and larger pins are made thicker so they don't bend. As a rule of thumb, a 1-inch pin is about 1.2 mm thick and a 1.5-inch pin closer to 1.5 mm. Because that extra material is in every piece, the size premium grows with quantity. See how thick are custom lapel pins?

Are enamel pins worth the price?

For something people wear for years, a pin that costs $1.25 to $3 in a normal order is a cheap way to put a logo, a cause or a club on someone's jacket. The price only feels high when you order a few dozen, or buy one at retail.

Want to see what your design would cost? Get a free quote with a proof, or call (385) 332-4553.