Special Pins for Special Days

The Vancouver Sun runs a sidebar in its Road to 2010 weekly feature called Collectors' Corner ... and seems tailor-made for this blog. Enjoy.

History: Have a theme, make a pin. That's the stock-in-trade now of Olympic organizing committees, which issue hundreds of pins celebrating every possible style, event, theme or day. Add to that, gimmicky things like flashing lights, and you have another reason for someone to be interested.

In this case, VANOC's licensed pin producer, Artiss Aminco, is producing a small run of special day pins that blink. One is the St. Patrick's Day pin, of which only 1,000 were made. Aminco says the pin is now sold out -- at least to retailers -- although we found a small group of 15 at VANOC's Olympic Store at their headquarters.

Aminco usually issues 2,010 pins for each style, but limits some pins, like this one and the upcoming Canada Day pin, to smaller runs. Pin historian Frank Zavarella says the St. Pat's pin will be a hot trader during the Olympics.

Collectors’ rendezvous in Beijing

If you are passionate about sport and Olympism, if you are looking for a particular object, or if you are missing a piece from your collection, Beijing is the right place for you to be from 23 to 28 June 2007 with the 13th World Olympic Collectors’ Fair.

Co-sponsored by the IOC, the Beijing Organising Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, the Chinese Olympic Committee, the State Post Bureau, and Desheng Ltd., the fair will host one of the pioneers in the Olympic collectors’ world, the founder of the fair 12 years ago, Juan Antonio Samaranch, IOC Honorary President and Chairman of the Olympic Philately, Numismatics and Memorabilia Commission.

Collectors from all over world

This Fair will see Olympic collectors from all over the world bringing their treasures of stamps, coins, medals, torches and other memorabilia, which carry more than one hundred years history of the Olympic Movement, to Beijing to exchange with Chinese collectors and to show to Chinese people the greatness of the Olympic Collectors Family. Around 329 people have registered so far, including more than 200 Chinese collectors. Some 21 countries, including China, are being represented and more than 15 organizations will be present.

'The Olympic Games and China’ exhibition

The Chinese Sport Stamps Collectors' Association (China Chapter of the FIPO – International Olympic Philately Federation) will hold a stamp exhibition to qualify the best exhibited for the 2008 Beijing Games. A large-scale exhibition entitled "The Olympic Games and China" will also be held during the Fair to display sport-themed Chinese artworks and the items reflecting China's participation in the Olympic Movement.

Vancouver 2010 Bid Pin Primer

The Vancouver Sun runs a sidebar in its Road to 2010 weekly feature called Collectors' Corner ... and seems tailor-made for this blog. Enjoy.

History: In the scheme of Olympic collectibles, pins created by bid groups are considered a specialty. They aren't generally made for retail sale, and instead are booster items bid societies use to promote their quest for a particular Games.

When Vancouver and Whistler tourism and business types first contemplated bidding for the Games in 1998, they participated in a "domestic" competition to win support of the Canadian Olympic Committee.

Vancouver and Whistler's bid (which the International Olympic Committee later ruled had to be listed by only one name, Vancouver) created a square gold tack back pin with a mountain image in the middle and the words "Can You Imagine" across the top. The pin was produced by Laurie Artiss Ltd of Regina, one of Canada's largest pin manufacturers.

B.C. pin collector and historian Frank Zavarella says only about 200 of the first run were created for a press conference at the Robson Square media centre. Another pin expert, Craig R. Perlow, has documented that the pin was later produced in larger quantities.

About ... Bid Pins

Pins have been a part of the Olympic Games since the turn of the 20th century. Nowadays, everybody has a pin - the athlete, the official, the sponsor, the media representative, the law-enforcement officer - and the list goes on. Here's an overview of Bid pins.

A city or organization doesn't have to wait for the Games to come before producing pins. A committee bidding for future Games will pump up its campaign by distributing pins and other promotional materials emblazoned with the city name, the bid logo and the target year.

Bid cities are recognized first by national Olympic committees as their official bid finalists and then national bid city, followed by recognition by the IOC as a candidate city, finalist and eventual bid winner. That could result in different pins marking the different stops along the process: bid-city pins, candidate-city pins and finalist pins. And once a city wins the right to host the Olympics, another logo change islikely in the works.

For example, after Sydney won the 2000 Summer Games, it dropped its outline of the Opera House skyline design for its "millennial man" logo depicting a torch-runner made up of boomerang shapes. And Salt Lake eventually dropped its vertical, three-sided bid logo for the snowflake-like emblem representing the sun over a snowy mountaintop.

Pacific Pin Club Show

I travelled to the Pacific Pin Club's 7th Annual West Coast Pin Collectors Celebration at the Richmond Cultural Centre on June 3, 2007.

By all accounts, the 40 collectors at the event had a great time with many of them coming from out of town.

Collectors gathered from throughout British Columbia, Alberta, California, Oregon, Saskatchewan, Washington and Wisconsin. And more than 200 visitors ... and potential new Olympic Pin Collectors ... came to the show too.

The event was well covered by local media ... Global TV Saturday Noon News had a minute-long clip, and there were articles in Business in Vancouver, Ming Pao, Richmond Review, Sing Tao and 24 Hours about pin collecting and the show.

This kind of interest and media coverage bodes well for the hobby!