Stick a Pin in It

Hi there...and I'm back. Don't have too much to show you yet, but I will in a day or so. For today, since I have been working on my Penny Sampler quilt, learning machine paper piecing, I want to talk about pins! I need help here people.

 Here is a random sample of the pins I have. A few years back I bought the colored glass head pins on the recommendation of a blogger.  See the problem here? The nickel plating has begun to come off and the pins catch going through the fabric. Those are Little House Pins I ordered on line. Kinda pricey as I recall. The white glass headed pins are from  some I bought at my LQS at least 5-7 years ago. I think they may have been clover brand and I bought them because I needed glass headed pins and I only had plastic headed pins.

 I do not sew over my pins, but in getting close to them before removing them, my feed dogs scuff them up a bit, and over time, the nickel comes off, they begin to rust and snag fabric, even though they are always in a pin cushion like this, filled with ground walnut shells.

 These are some of the pins in my "collection". Dritz, Clover and Little house brands. The ones without heads on them are for special projects from my past sewing adventures. I don't care for them as they are hard on the finger tips, especially now that I am dealing with some neuropathy.

I keep these babies separate, and really only use them to mark rows with numbers for quilt assembly. I wrote the numbers on them in sharpie. Works like a dream. So one other thing I found out is that the lower the number on the "size" of the pin, the thicker it is. Now, pins aren't cheap, at least not good ones. So my question to you, dear readers is this: Do you have a pin that you might recommend? I want one that will hold up pretty well and has a glass head so my iron won't melt it. I tried Google to research this, but didn't find much. So...can you help a fellow quilter out? What do you use and how would you rate it on a scale of 1-10?
Let's see where this takes us, shall we? See you soon with some sewing pics.
Linking up with Lorna for Let's Bee Social.