Given the venue – a glass-sided room with a view over the Olympic Stadium, berthed like a huge liner, and the red-brown intricacy of the ArcelorMittal Orbit tower alongside – any event staged here is going to be spectacular. An exhibition of rawlplugs would be spectacular.

But this particular spectacular gathering, according to the man behind it, Paul McGill, is an unofficial London 2012 pin collectors event. Hear that LOCOG? Unofficial. It's OK. Don't worry.

The London 2012 organisers did worry, however, about McGill's previous name for his website. And so London2012pins.com turned into its current incarnation of www.londonpins.co.uk.

McGill also provides the information for insidethegames' own dedicated collecting site, www.insidegamescollecting.biz, the first of its kind in the Olympic Movement. 

The gathering also has a measured official blessing by dint of the fact that one of the attending traders works for LOCOG and has written a blog about pin trading for their website.

Plus, of course, it has the privilege of taking place within the London 2012 shop which, in terms of views, narrowly beats the venue for previous gatherings – the Railway Tavern in Stratford.


"I spoke to some of the staff at John Lewis at the Westfield Stratford opening last year and asked about the possibility of holding events here, and they said it was something they could think about," said McGill (pictured). 

For McGill, there are three main indicators of value for a pin. The first, most obviously, is monetary – a value tested by many collectors through the miracle that is eBay.

While McGill does not wholeheartedly embrace this phenomenon, he accepts it is a part of the pin-collecting zeitgeist. But he personally prefers the other two indicators – a pin can be more valuable if it relates to an event you have attended or felt emotionally linked to, and, aside from that, the rarest are often the best.

"For me, collection is all about a list," he says, multi-coloured badges glinting on the lanyard he wears round his neck. "Once I have selected a particular category, it's about making sure I've got the whole collection. It's all about complete collections."

But if it is impossible to get every pin, being able to document and record it is a good second best.

"There's stuff here today that I will never have," he says. "So I will get photos and put them on my website."

Top of his hit-list on the day is any in-store badge to be gleaned from the hosts themselves, John Lewis. Also on the wishlist – British Airways pins awarded to employees who have mastered different languages, pins marking 2012 that have been given internally to employees, and pins relating to the couriers UPS.

The rarer Olympic pins can fetch up to £200 on eBay. But that is a price too high as far as McGill is concerned.

"Some people who don't care about pins they get from their companies will simply sell them, which is bad publicity really. John Lewis, for instance, have said that if they see their internal pins being advertised for sale then employees responsible could be in trouble."

McGill reckons he has close to 1,000 Olympics-related pins. As for his daughter, Sarah – Disney is her thing. She has more than 500 badges relating to her favourite character, Stitch.

"If I see any badge that's to do with Stitch, I'll get it," she says with a grin. Like father, like daughter it seems...

For Disney, the commercial advantage of pin-trading is crystal clear. You have to buy badges from them – typically eight for $30 – before you can trade. And there are, in McGill's estimation, "hundreds of thousands" of Disney pin badges. It's a never-ending franchise.

Disney "get" pin badges. But for some companies who operate in Britain, the concept still seems to be a little hazy.

"BT, Lloyd's TSB, EDF, Coca Cola – they have all engaged with us," McGill says.

Other companies, however, do not welcome the attention of pin trading enthusiasts, even to the point of asking them to remove details of their pins from the website.

It is a position which puzzles McGill. "I don't think they realise the power of what they've got," he says, wonderingly.

"It's worldwide and especially strong in places where the Summer or Winter Games have been held, such as Los Angeles or Vancouver.

"I would like to see a lot more participation from companies and recognition of pin collectors. Some companies see us as pests. We are not. We can help them spread a positive message.

"For the cost of making just a couple of hundred or so extra badges, which is relatively negligible, many companies can do wonders for their image. If you ask around here what people think of, say, BT or Lloyd's TSB, they will be really positive about them."


As he speaks, a tall and elegant figure in black is observing the scene, and taking photographs. The mystery lady turns out to be Cherry Yang (pictured above centre with Rowbottom and Sarah Bowron, the commercial director of insidethegames), from Honav, who manufacture and supply pins internationally.

She echoes McGill's point about the potential benefits of pin badge trading to participating companies. "Pin trading can promote the power of a brand very effectively," she says. "There are many companies who have had experience as sponsors and they understand the benefits. But for some first-time sponsors there is sometimes a lack of knowledge of what can be done.

"But I think perceptions can change very quickly, once people begin to see for themselves how it is working."

She adds: "We plan to have more of these events over the next few months, and there will be pin-trading in the Olympic Park during Games time."

The collectors who magpie about the tables, chatting affably while stealing covetous glances at the richly-coloured booty on offer, have come from various parts of London, Cambridgeshire, East Anglia – one even from Land's End.

Previous events have seen collectors from the United States and Canada in attendance.

David Reinhardt has not had to come that far – he's from north London – but although this is the third such 2012-related event he has been to, he does not yet number himself among the pin-trading cognoscenti.

"I've been collecting pins for 15 years, but I have only been trading since I found Paul's website," he said.

"There's a learning curve. And I'm still quite low down on it. I started off bringing in pins I had doubles of. But no one at these events is really interested in retail badges – they can buy those for themselves.

"It is more a case of trading the internal sponsor pins, which are harder to get hold of. Some companies will give you a couple of pins if you ask them politely. I've had pins from BT, BP and Cadbury's, for instance.

"So basically the people who are better at begging, borrowing or stealing will have more pins to trade with.

"For instance, I got some BT Countdown pins from them, which is a category where you will either try to collect all of them or not. But if you aren't, then you can trade what you have.

"My ideal scenario here today would be two things. It would be great to find people with some of the pins I'm after. But I am also looking forward to talking to people about their take on the Games themselves, and what interests them.

"As far as my wishlist for today goes, I have a soft spot for Wenlock and Mandeville." He points across to a display one along on the table. "For instance, there's a nice Wenlock Panasonic pin there..."


In the meantime, another collector arrives with a glint in her eye. And she's looking at me – that is, she's looking at my lapel, where two insidethegames pins are now lodged, my old one having been supplemented by the newly produced version marking the fact that we are now in the year of the Olympics.

"I've got my beady eye on those," admits the lady in question, who turns out to be Kerstin Fletcher, from Ipswich. A deal is done – the 2011 pin for a brief interview.

"I started collecting football badges and pins in the mid-1970s," says Fletcher. "But two years ago someone who knew I collected gave me an Olympic pin badge, and that started me off in a new field.

"I've enjoyed collecting Olympic pins so far, and what also inspired me was that the Games were about to be virtually on my doorstep."

Fletcher and her partner have had good fortune with the Olympic ticket lottery – they'll be watching football at Wembley, volleyball, and women's freestyle wrestling.

She prepares to trade by buying job lots of pins and keeping perhaps five or six for herself before using the rest to swap.

Her prize exhibit so far is an original enamel badge from the 1936 Berlin Games, which she bought for around £25 in an online auction.

"I'm willing to pay that kind of money, but when you start talking about pins being sold for £200 or more I don't agree with that, because it distorts the value of collecting."

Nik Thompson, wearing a striped tee-shirt at least as colourful as any of the pins on display, also knows the value of collecting, although he is looking at it from the perspective of London 2012 sponsors, Lloyds Banking Group, for whom he works in the retail division.

Thompson is a popular figure here – and it's not just because he has a bagful of top quality freebies on his person, although obviously that does help. As someone who is responsible for overseeing the design and manufacture of Lloyds' London-related pins, he is showing other sponsors the way in terms of keeping in touch with his target audience.

"It's great to be able to come here just to see what's going on and to feel the buzz and excitement of a trading event," he says. "I have a number of samples here for possible future production so it has been really valuable to get the feedback of some of these collectors.

"Some sponsors still don't quite seem to have got the message. I don't think they really appreciate how powerful and popular a pin can be. Personally I have really tried to embrace the whole phenomenon.

"I can see a number of pins I have helped to produce on display here, and it is quite humbling to see they are so valued in people's collections. I've spoken to a number of athletes who have appeared at previous Olympics, and they say that one of the first questions they get asked when they are at a Games is 'Have you got pins?'"

Speaking as a journalist who has covered many Winter and Summer Games, I can vouch for the veracity of that, although in my experience, more often, the request has come down to a single plaintive word, usually uttered by a young volunteer: "Pins?" It is one of the worst moments of any Games when you realise at such a point that you have given away your last freebie from the press bag..."


Standing near Thompson, just along one of the several tables employed for trading, is a man whom I must refer to only as Philip. Philip from LOCOG, proud owner of 40 of the 42 internal pins produced by the Olympic Delivery Authority, demon seeker of the two he doesn't yet own.

Philip is one of the four effective founder members of this gathering, having started collecting Olympic 2012 pins almost five years ago. He has something special to show me as he bends reverently down to the black-backed collection in front of him.

"Take a look at those," he says, pointing to a set of three cycling pins in the pictogram style. All very nice too.

"Take a closer look," he says. "You see the mountain bike pin? That's got a track bike on it. And the track bike pin has a road bike on it. And the road bike pin..."

I'm beginning to get the idea now, and supply the end of this particular sentence: "...has a mountain bike on it?"

"Yes," he says, triumphantly. "They corrected them after a couple of weeks. These are a rarity. You are not going to get these again..."

Again, I get it. The buzz of the true collector.

Earlier, trying to sum up the draw of the activity, McGill says: "One pin collector recently put it like this: 'I'm not a leper, I'm a drug addict.' It's an addiction in many ways."

Meanwhile, Reinhardt is right in the thick of the trading action in the long-windowed room.

"You can't beat this," he says. "No disrespect to the Railway Tavern, who were great to us, but you can't beat that view, can you? It's inspirational."

To keep up-to-date with the latest collecting news visit www.insidegamescollecting.biz, or join our dedicated Facebook group at www.facebook.com/InsideGamesCollecting.

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, has covered the past five Summer and four Winter Olympics for The Independent. Previously he has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, the Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. He is now chief feature writer for insidethegames. Rowbottom's Twitter feed can be accessed here.