Olympic Pin Trading

Piper asked me to write about pin trading, so here goes.  Pin trading at the olympics is a huge event in itself.  Some really serious traders will travel to a games city JUST to trade pins.....NOT to see any events.  How it works is if you are displaying multiple pins on your hat/ vest/ coat/ lanyard you are basically saying "I am a trader, ask me to trade".  You can trade any kinds of pins but the most popular are current years pins followed by anything olympic. 

Since this was going to be our first olympics we obviously didn't have any olympic pins to start trading with, so back before Christmas I ordered several small old inexpensive olympic pin lots off of ebay, about 40 pins in total and gave them to everyone with their Christmas RW&B fleece hats. We also found a few at Value Village and Salvation Army of all places. 

Once we got here all we had to do was wear the hats and people would stop and just GIVE us new current year pins (mostly games sponsors) which was a huge surprise to me, and then the trading really started.  Some times it is hard to get down a block without having half a dozen people stop and ask you to trade.

People love to trade with the kids especially.  There are so may different pins produced for every olympics it is virtually impossible to collect them all, although those serious pin traders I mentioned at the start will try!  Travis is trying to collect hockey and Miga (one of the mascots) pins, Piper is working on anything for the 2010 Olympics, I look for current year pins too I especially like US team pins and some of the sponsor pins w mascots & neat "looks", Mike is looking for pins depicting the various events WE are attending at these games.

If you are displaying a pin, it basically says it is up for grabs, so if you have one you DON'T want to trade, you are well advised to keep it in your pocket or at home as traders tend to become a bit put out if you say "no, not that one" too many times.

If all else fails and you aren't able to trade for a particular "official" pin, there are several stores that are more than willing to sell them to you! You are out of luck for sponsor, volunteer or olympic committee pins though, those are only available through trading or someone giving them out.

The coolest thing about trading (I think) isn't the acquisition of these shiny pieces of metal, but rather the neat people you meet. We have traded with folks ranging from locals to visitors from around the world to former olympians.  It's the best conversation starter...along with "we're from Alaska".