What's Up Wednesday June 14, 2023, #72

This week on What's Up Wednesday the release of the first group of official pins for 2023. 

Before we get to the new pins, we have a special offer in honor of today being Flag Day here in the USA. We're throwing in a free flag pin with every order placed today. It's while supplies last, so place your order early to ensure your special gift.

Each year Balloon Fiesta produces nearly 200 different pin designs. About half of those go to the Special Shapes pins and are available for purchase on the field during the event. Another large set of pins go to the different Balloon Fiesta Teams  for trading. These would be groups like the launch directors, the scoring team, safety officials and more. These pins are not for sale and have to be obtained from members of those teams usually during Balloon Fiesta.

But there are some pins that are available for you to purchase and we're excited to release the first batch of those today.

We're going to start with the number 51 pins. This year there are 3 different color schemes available. Blue, Turquoise and Rainbow. The 5 contains the words, Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, while the 1 has a number of balloons in flight in addition to the year 2023. It's a simple but elegant design that we're sure will be very popular. By the way, these pins are limited and numbered editions. There are 3000 Blue pins, 2000 Rainbow and only 1000 Turquoise. Each pin contains its special number on the back.

Did you know the idea of creating a pin designating the number of the event started back in 1991 with year number 20. We're now up to 2023 and event number 51. You can see all of our pins in the Collector's Corner on our website. 

One more fun fact on the 2023 pins. This year we have upgraded the backs. No more metal butterflies that don't latch, or barrel ones that you can't get off. All of these year's pins will now feature a silicon back, in the shape of hot air balloon with AIBF embossed on it. These backs will grip better and are a lot easier to remove and put on. We're excited for you to experience these first-hand.

Next week on What's Up Wednesday, another batch of the official pins. In fact, we'll be releasing additional official pins every Wednesday for the rest of June.

As always, thanks for your support of Balloon Fiesta and Balloon Fiesta Stuff!