Rally on Robson Supporter Pin

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

What: Rally on Robson supporter pin

Trade value: $30-$40

History: In March, 2003, the International Olympic Committee's 2010 evaluation committee came to Vancouver to check out the city's bid.

It was a momentous event, one that if handled well could help seal the deal and give Canada the Games. If handled wrong, it could spell disaster, giving Vancouver's rivals a leg up. So the city, province and Canada literally rolled out the red carpet.

One part called for a massive public rally on Robson Street on Sunday, March 2, the first full day of the commission's visit. Organized by the Robson Street Business Association, the so-called Rally On Robson involved a street party featuring everything from a dryland bobsled track to a temporary ice rink. There were street performers and musicians.

Someone produced a small group of gold-coloured pewter "Rally on Robson" pins that were sold at a couple of stores along the drag. Frank Zavarella, one of the deans of Vancouver's pin-collecting world, estimates no more than 500 of the pins were produced.

The pin is now considered scarce. Ironically, the IOC commission never got to the rally because it was in meetings all day.

Feature: Business on pinpoint

The Vancouver Sun included an excellent article on pins in its Road to 2010 weekly feature ... and it seems tailor-made for this blog. Enjoy.












Business on pinpoint

The making of an Olympic pin is hardly simple

It is sometimes hard for Ian Tait to imagine that those lapel pins that people buy by the tens of thousands at Olympic Games in every conceivable shape and size all start out as pieces of formless metal, to which a surprising amount of high-tech attention is paid.

"Just look at that work. You can't imagine how much effort goes into making this," he says as he runs his fingers over a stunningly beautiful pin of an antlered deer, whose throat and chest rise up from a dark brown at the bottom to a blended tan to a bone white on the whithers. Every one of those colours has been hand-applied with a hypodermic needle, making each pin subtly different from the next.

The pin Tait is talking about is a head of a stag made for the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Games, made in the traditional "cloisonné" style of glass-applied metal work of art that has a myriad of colours. It is one of only 1,000 made, and it sits in his pin bag as an example of the finest style of pin-making.

Tait, the general manager of Artiss Aminco, which has the exclusive contract to provide pins for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games, has brought over an array of lapel pins to show just how these souvenirs are made. They range from simple buttons to pieces of interlocking shrapnel that would weigh down even the strongest general.

There are two-tone silver and gold metal pins. There are simple die-stamped images to which soft enamel has been applied. There are even papered pins over which a plastic cover has been attached.

But it is the intricate die-stamped, three-dimensional pins with the finest glass or resin colors that stand out the most.

History records that the forerunner to today's lapel pins were likely brooches made in the 12th Century in Egypt and Mesopotamia, possibly from colored ceramics or pottery.

Tait, who worked for BC Hydro for years before working on the 2010 bid, is a pin collector at heart. He says there is something magical about finding or trading a pin, even if it is one of the cheaper ones.

"Every pin begins as a memory. It is not a lapel pin, it is a connection to a person, place, time or event," he said. "You may not remember some things, but most people will know exactly who gave them that pin they treasure."

Tait speaks from experience. He still has the first pin he ever received. "It was in 1967, I was a young scout, and it was a pin for my first provincial jamboree in Penticton."

In the Olympic world, pin-trading got its start at the very start of the modern Olympics.

"It started in 1896, at the first Games," Tait said. "The athletes and officials were all given cardboard discs to identify themselves, and many of them traded with each other."

The first Olympic sponsor pin -- which unlike retail pins are not sold but are given away by companies as rewards or for promotional purposes --was a pin made by a Finnish margarine company in 1920, Tait said.

Today's pins have come a long way, but the best of them are still made in the refined cloisonné style (pronounced cloy-so-nay), which is French for "partitioned".

Tait says there are as many as six steps in making a pin, from developing the art concept to colourizing it, approving it and making the dies, to making pre-production and post-production samples.

Most pins start out as a blank piece of copper, zinc or steel. The finished artwork is transferred and engraved into a hard metal die that is used to stamp out images from the roll of blanks. Depending on the type of pin and how intricate it is, it goes through one, two, and even as many as three or four stamps.

The first die stamp usually builds the impression in the metal, including the cloisons, or cavities, that will be filled with colours. The second stamp cuts the rough pin away from the excess metal. If the pin has cut-out areas inside, or requires background applications such as a pebbled surface, it is stamped again.

And that's just the automated part of the job. The next part is the most laborious.

Every one of those cavities in the pin now must be filled by hand with the colour scheme.

"There is no room for error. There has to be a high degree of accuracy, because a single colour put into the wrong cavity changes the pin," he said.

The pin has to be fired in an oven for each colour, meaning a pin with five colours requires five firings. After the colour application process, the pin is buffed and cleaned to make the surrounding metal stand out. If the scheme calls for the pin to have gold or silver plating, it goes through an electroplating process to apply a tiny amount of the precious metal.

In today's world, true cloisonné glass pins are collector-grade. But they are also the most expensive to make. Hence, the industry has adapted new materials to bring down the cost, including resins, hard and soft enamels, and paper images in plastic domes, the latter of which are usually sponsored giveaways at corporate and public functions.

Just who buys these tiny pieces of art? "Everyone," Tait said. "I like to say my job isn't to sell a pin, it is to create a collector." The pin-trading world is the subject of a story for another day.

For the 2010 Olympics, Artiss Aminco will produce about 800 to 900 retail designs, including series on sports, landscapes, heritage sites and even the most whimsical, such as a flashing Halloween pumpkin.

The company is a venture of two of the largest pin-makers in North America, California-based Aminco, which has done every Olympics since 1996, and Laurie Artiss Ltd., a Regina-based company that is the largest of its kind in Canada.

BC Lottery 2010 Bid Supporter Pin

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

What: B.C. Lottery Corporation Bid Supporter Pin

Trade value: $40.

History: In the bid phase, Vancouver enjoyed support from companies that included Telus, ICBC, Molson, and media organizations. But only one company, BC Lotteries, appears to have produced a pin to celebrate Vancouver's entry into the Olympic process.

The Crown corporation underwrote two types of pins. One, a vertical domed paper label pin, was for Lotteries staff and to hand out to the public in limited numbers. It was made in two versions, with gold and silver backing.

The other style was a series of three horizontal pins with the term "Team 2010" atop a BC Lotteries logo and the term "Vancouver 2010 Founding Supporter."

These pins, produced in 2003 just before Vancouver's win, came in silver, gold and a cloisonné-style white enamel with a coloured logo. They were handed out only to BC Lotteries staff and a small number of volunteers and bid staff.

Only 4,000 of the vertical pins were produced in May 2001. Laurie Artiss produced very, very small numbers of the three horizontals.

All are scarce, and if found, sell for between $40 and $50 US.

The Exclusive Prague Pin

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

What: "Prague" Pin

Trade value: $250 or more.

History: In late June 2003, John Furlong led a contingent to Prague in the Czech Republic to make Vancouver's formal presentation to the International Olympic Committee at the 115th IOC Session.

Among the group of 100 were Vancouver Bid Corp officials and staff, bureaucrats and politicians from the federal and provincial governments, as well as the municipalities of Vancouver, Burnaby, West Vancouver and Whistler.

Each member of the delegation -- was given a special kit, including a jacket for the men, skirt for the women, shirts and blouses, ties, a lucky loonie and a special delegate's pin that was produced only for that occasion. (The two RCMP honour guard officers didn't get the clothing kit. There's another story about a last-minute change of ties because of a clothing clash, but that's for another day).

The pin contains a raised enamel gold rectangle of the bid logo, incorporates the Olympic rings, and states "Vancouver 2010 Candidate City." Vanoc says only 150 were produced.

Pins from "Birds Nest" Steel

Coca-Cola to produce Olympic pins from "Birds Nest" steel

10 August 2007

Coca-Cola will be working with the official pin licensee in China to produce Coca-Cola branded Olympic pins from the same consignment of steel as used in the construction of the Beijing National Stadium.

Earlier this year, Worldwide TOP Partner The Coca-Cola Company hosted a delegation from China, including the team responsible for building the landmark Beijing National Stadium and BOCOG, at its global headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.

The Chinese team presented a gift of a section of steel weighing over 500 kilos which came from the same batch as used in the construction of the innovative Beijing National (or “Bird’s Nest”) stadium.

The section of steel will remain on display at the world headquarters of The Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta as a lasting memento of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

"By using leftover steel from the Bird’s Nest construction in the manufacture of Coca-Cola pins, we are bringing people closer to the Olympic Games experience, and supporting the pursuit of a "Green Olympics," said David Brooks, Vice-President and General Manager of the Coca-Cola Olympic Project Group.

"It was an honour to host our guests in Atlanta and receive this beautiful memento of our involvement with the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games."

About ... Media Pins

Thousands of Olympic media types represent scores of publications and TV and radio stations from across the globe — and most will have at least one pin representative of their media market.

Why do some media pins bear the Olympic rings or a Games logo? Because the media corporation is also a sponsor or supplier — and at a high enough level to allow the use of the Olympic rings or the Games logo on paraphernalia ranging from pins and packaging to apparel and equipment.

A prime example is NBC, which pays hundreds of millions of dollars for the rights to broadcast the Olympics. Other media sponsors include Sports Illustrated, Canadian Press, USA Today, Time magazine, Reuters, Kyodo News and other major national and international media corporations.

Some longtime Olympic media players have become quite good at producing popular pins, despite being restricted from use of Olympic symbols and logos. Many such pins feature eye-catching designs using landmarks and symbols representative of the Games' locale.

Also, some sponsors and suppliers produce "media" pins — not because they're in the print or broadcast business but to distribute among the media. The result is another limited-quantity, specialized pin that becomes popular among traders.