Name: Debbie Randall

From: Canada

How long have you been collecting? Since Vancouver 2010

How many pins do you own? About 75

Debbie Randall_-_pinI 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 I was sold even after these two reasons but, as many glories quickly fade, the bid was eventually withdrawn due to funding and support issues.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.