Name: Marney Smithies

From: Canada

How many years have you been collecting? 24 years

How many pins do you own? 500+


My most memorable pin trading story or experience was my first. I was the youngest member of my Canadian women’s wheelchair basketball team, we participated in the Seoul, Korea 1988 Paralympics. There was of course quite a bit of pin trading in the athlete village but the best place was just outside of the village, in the local community.

I meet so many people from Seoul and being young (18 at the time) and with it being my first trip outside of my home province and country it was a great eye opener.

Trading to people who did not speak my language was not a problem, the people were so grateful to get any Canadian pins, I gave away a ton of pins on my first day, had to go back to teammates, fortunately not all were into pin trading and I could get some pins from friends, and so handing out pins became so much fun and part of the trading experience.

Meeting kids who were running after us for autographs and giving them Canadian pins was just so thrilling, what a rush! Korea will always be a special memory and the start of my pin trading love and passion, for this I will always be grateful to the people of Korea for hosting such a great Paralympics, the people were so kind and generous. Good times!

My latest pin trading experience was very close to home, I am lucky enough to live in Vancouver now and to host the 2010 Olympics and Paralympics was a blast! Again meeting people from around the world at different events and pin trading places was a blast. When you have pins out on your shirt or hat it is an invitation basically that says, “Hey, come and talk to me”.

Being in a wheelchair I have found that people in general do not just come up and chat, well some people do of course, but more often than not people seem to avoid me, but whatever I am used it. However, having the pins to break the ice so to speak has been a real blessing and I am so happy that I have had some great opportunities to meet people and also trade for some fun pins.

At this time I would also like to say good luck to all the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic athletes, and of course pin traders. May the Games begin! 

Name: Al Falcao

From: Canada

How long have you been collecting? 24 years

How many pins do you own? 35,000 different pins

Pin Trading at a Coca-Cola Olympic Pin Trading Centre can be very hectic. Often times you don't recognise the person you are trading with and sometimes you just don't care because it's the pin you're after!

During Lillehammer 1994, a couple appeared at my trading table and the man asked if I would trade for his IOC 101st. Session Monaco 1993 pin. My sixth sense told me that the man had to be an IOC Member because this was a very exclusive pin at the time.

I took a closer look at the man and said " If you are who I think you are, let me tell you that before you were born, I used to collect stamps and wrote to your parents congratulating them on their marriage and they very kindly sent me a set of their marriage commemorative postage stamps". My guess was right. It was Prince Albert of Monaco!

We not only traded pins but we also had a very pleasant conversation about his bobsled team's performance at Lillehammer 1994.

I met Prince Albert at two subsequent Olympics and he was gracious enough both times to say that he remembered me!

Name: Robin Ford

From: West Drayton

How long have you been collecting? 1 year

How many pins do you own? 120

I think my best story is my first pin meet in Stratford.

Everyone was very welcoming explaining about the pins they have as well as trading. I also found out a lot of useful information such as where to find pin news and how/where to get a bag for my collection.

I also had the chance to swap a few pins as well, my favourite of which was the Lloyds TSB and Bank of Scotland logo pins both of which have a very limited issue of 2,000 and 500 respectively.

This has opened me up to the world of trading and I look forwards to trading at the Olympics over the summer.

Name: Chris Miller

From: Louisville, USA

How long have you been collecting? 2 years

How many pins do you own? About 30

I was attending the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, and was on a ferry heading over to North Vancouver to go to Whistler to watch the luge competition.

I had on a knit cap with the logo of a local university (the University of Kentucky). Then one of my fellow passengers came up to me and asked if I was from Kentucky, and I said yes. It turned out he was there as part of a student media group from Asbury College (a private school near UK here in Kentucky).

He said he wished he had a cameraman with him so that he could interview me, but what he did do was give me two of his pins - one was an NBC/Asbury College pin, and the other one was for the OBS (Olympic Broadcasting Service).

My favourite of the two is the OBS one; it's a pretty nicely detailed video camera with the OBS logo on it. And I got it just for wearing the right hat!

Name: Ed Dickson

From: Canada

How long have you been collecting? 4 years

How many pins do you own? 1,200

I started collecting pins for my seven grandchildren leading up to the 2010 Vancouver Olympics seeing as how the Games were on our home soil.

While collecting mainly sponsor pins I came across one on a website put out by the Government of Canada with a small Canadian and Russian flag across the bottom of it.

When I contacted the Government and a local MP, I was told that these pins were made for a trade trip to Russia which had been cancelled and that these pins were not available. I was later told in a response from a Government Security person that these pins did not exist as they were destroyed.

I then saw this pin on another Canadian pin site and sent the information for them to the Government for them to see. I was thanked for the information with no follow up. In a last ditch effort I wondered if there was a cover-up going on but still received no answer.

Alas, about ten days later a few were sent to me with no return address. To this day this is still my favourite pin and I felt a little like James Bond after finally getting some. Scary too!

Name: Debbie Randall

From: Canada

How long have you been collecting? Since Vancouver 2010

How many pins do you own? About 75

I travelled to Tromsø in Norway in 2007, a little town past the Arctic Circle. And I fell in love. The landscape splays out before you, open and airy and full of the saltiness of the sea. The city is ringed by mountains. In the centre, a vibrant community, a university, cultures collide.

The town was undertaking a bid for the 2018 Games while I was there. I picked up leaflets, which told me all the reasons they deserved to host the world. They were the highest latitude that had ever bid on an Olympic games before. You could ski on any mountain anywhere around the town, in the middle of the night by the midnight sun. I was sold even after these two reasons but, as many glories quickly fade, the bid was eventually withdrawn due to funding and support issues.

I came back to Canada and reminisced about the daydreams of Olympic potential in the hills and fjords of Tromsø. Years later, in a tiny room at a pin traders meet outside Vancouver, I stood holding a meagre bag of 10 or so pins that I had acquired. Flipping through books of trader pins, my heart stopped. There - a Tromsø bid pin. Two, in fact, one gold and one silver. I ask about them. I realised I have nothing anyone could want in my bag. The man sees my enthusiasm. I offer him two pins for the bid pin. He obliges. I ask about the second Tromsø pin, but he has all the other pins I am holding. I thank him and walk away with my bid pin, dancing as if I had just bought a million-dollar home.

A second later, another man calls me over. He makes a deal with me. He takes one of my unnoticeable traders and offers me something he knows his neighbour does not have. I go back to the first man. I stick out my hand with the new pin. He smiles, and I smile, and I walk away with the new mate in my pin pair of two Tromsø bid pins. And that sense of community was the very reason I think the Vancouver Games did so well, and the very reason I would have given anything to see them go to Tromsø.

Name: Samantha Crawford 

From: Leicester

How long have you been collecting? On and off for a few years

How many pins do you own? 50

I started collecting pins in 2004 when I attended the Athens Olympics. I met a few Americans who introduced me to the idea of trading.

Since then I have traded pins at training camps and have continued to collect pins from sporting events.

As a 2012 Games Maker I have already started collecting Olympic pins and I am looking forward to trading with others.

Name: Susan Shyluk

From: Canada

How long have you been collecting? 34 years

How many pins do you own? A pin book full, but there's still more room!

When I was a young girl my brother's teacher gave me a Misha mascot pin from the Moscow Olympics. I don't think she knew what she was starting! Since then I have collected mascot pins from each of the Summer and Winter Games.

In 2010 I became a total pinhead when the Games came to Vancouver! I joined the local pin club and made so many friends, and I even wrote an article about Olympic mascots for their newsletter.

I was very fortunate to get my hands on a very special, rare pin and became very popular at the club! It helped me trade for a wonderful first, limited Mukmuk pin. I love Mukmuk, and it is absolutely my favourite pin.

Name: Dalene Hutchinsen

From: Canada

How long have you been collecting? 2 years

How many pins do you own? 150

This may seem odd but when I first started collecting pins of the 2012 Olympics the first pin I managed to get was one from BT and I can still recall how excited I was. I have since got many more great looking pins but there is nothing like the first one.

Name: Sarah Poirier

From: Canada

How long have you been collecting? 3 years

How many pins do you own? 250+

I fell in love with the Olympics in 1994, when the Winter Games were in Lillehammer and I was 10 years old. Thirteen years later, I found myself living and working in Oslo. I was searching for a link.

I bought a few old 1994 Olympic pins. I bought a few more. I went to a flea market one day and a man was selling pins off of an old felted hat. I bought three.

I spent the rest of the week tossing and turning and waking in cold sweats and wondering what I would do if I went back the next week and there were no more. I panicked, I worried, I craved more. The next week, I went back and the man remembered me and he asked if I was back for more pins. I bought the entire hat full of them. It was still the best material purchase that I made the entire time I was in Norway.

I cradled it as if it were a baby, and I was hooked on pins. I will always owe it to my time spent in Norway and the magic of Lillehammer - to see the city and to stand there knowing that it once held the eyes of the world, but that it managed to remain tiny, small, humble, rural... that was what captivated me. And to know that even if I wasn't there, that there were artefacts of it that I could hold onto, ones which could become a part of me, that was enough to feel like a part of history.

Pin collecting is our link into the past, in some way, the only legacy of the Games. Pins transcend borders, people come from all over and converge on a place and then return home. And my favourite pin story will always be the way that man at the flea market on a street corner in Oslo remembered me, and the way he smiled when I said that I would take them all.

Name: Joerg Gardey

From: Canada

How long have you been collecting? 10 years

How many pins do you own? 2000

In 2010, I took a bus up to Whistler, BC, with two friends to greet the torch relay. Whistler was packed that day. All three of us had a day we will never forget. We made many memories that day. However one little girl will remember that special day, she became a pin collector.

We first met this 5-year-old & her mother at 10 am. She loved all the pins we had on our scarves. The 3 of us gave her 3 pins of her choice. Her mother was very grateful. The little girl was thrilled.

We again ran into them a little later, her mom had bought her some retail pins & added them to the 3 we had given her. An hour later we saw them again and now the girl had even more pins, given to her by other people, including some media, & sponsor pins.

Each time we saw them, this little girl had more pins on her scarf. By 8:00 that night we again saw them. This time her and her mom were doing a TV interview with a Japanese TV crew, and yes they gave her one of their much coveted pins.

At this point it had been a very long, exciting, special day, & this little girl's scarf was so full of pins, she could hardly stand because of the weight of all the pins she had be given. This all started because we gave her 3 pins that morning. Her mother thanked us, for making this such a fun, memorable day and for turning her into a pin collector.

Name: Emma Rowan

From: London

How long have you been collecting? 2 years

How many pins do you own? 8

Myself and my colleagues love pug dogs. We always take photos of pugs and have often compared pictures of pugs in funny situations.

We were out for dinner and our colleague said she had an announcement. She then produced four 2012 Honav pug pins, which we all put on and wore while we ate our dinner. We are the honorary 2012 pug team.

Thanks Honav for your dedication to making fantastic 2012 pin badges.

Name: Bill Onwusah

From: Leyton, London

How long have you been collecting? 3 1/2 years

How many pins do you own? 800

I suppose that it's a bit of a cliche, but my favourite relates to the very first pin that I collected because it wasn't really even mine at all. It actually belonged to my son who, when he was in year 6, he won a debate at school about whether we should host the Olympics.

His prize was to join something called the Construction Crew. Along with pupils from the host boroughs they were to witness the development of the Olympic site from its very early days.

Along the way, they met various famous people from Prime Ministers and London Mayors to Olympic gold medal holders like Jonathan Edwards and gold medal winners that were running the bid, and Lord Coe.

After one of the initial meetings they were given pins and what was that pin? It was the Builder's Hat, pin number ODA0001 that after much negotiation became my very first pin London Olympic pin.

Incidentally, he said that we should host the Olympics. 

Name: Kerstin Fletcher

From: Ipswich 

How long have you been collecting? Since the mid-1970's

How many pins do you own? Thousands... not counted!

I have many cherished pins that I have hotly traded for, long chased after, or that were given to me by dear friends. But oddly enough, the pin in my collection with the greatest amount of sentimental meaning attached to it is actually a shop-bought pin I only acquired a few weeks ago.

It is the London 2012 souvenir pin of the Upper Case Alphabet series, letter "K". That happens to be my own initial; however it is also the initial of Ken, my partner's brother, who very suddenly and heartbreakingly passed away last year.

Ken was one of the most special people I ever knew: a surgeon at Newcastle Hospital, who saved and improved the lives of countless people; a cheerful and thoughtful friend who'd go out of his way to help; and a much loved family man. He was much into sport, especially football, and one of my final memories of him is of us enjoying a game of football together at St. James's Park in Newcastle (which is of course one of the Olympic venues).

Now when we go to see some Olympic football later this year, no doubt something he too would have liked, I shall be wearing my "K" badge on the day in memory of Ken.

Name: Colin Wills

From: Nottingham

How long have you been collecting? 30 years

How many pins do you own? Very few - given them away!

Many years ago, I was a Head of Delegation with the British Handball Association Women's squad in Portugal. In those days we were very naive about swapping gifts etc and at the Civic Reception, we had no gifts to give.

The coach took me to one side and covertly removed my BHA pin badge from my jacket and we gave this as our 'gift' to the hosting mayor - VERY embarrassing.

Today, as I travel as a European official and receive many pins as I visit clubs and nations, I will always look to give them to others when I return.