ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, July 23, 1996 TAG: 9607230070
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: our eyes in atlanta
DATELINE: ATLANTA
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK
At these Summer Games and other Olympics, gold, silver and bronze are goals for some, but there is another alloy that thrills more.
It's tin, or at least mostly.
It seems I went to the Olympics and a pin-collectors convention broke out. Pin trading has become an Olympic sport unto itself. Pins have been an Olympic tradition for years; now they're collectibles, too.
It's hot and sticky in Olympic city, and most folk are wisely wearing light, lose-fitting clothing. Of course, many of them weigh down their outfits with pins.
They're not for lapels only.
Pins have long been attached to sporting events as souvenirs, but the trading fervor, albeit in much smaller numbers, rivals the Olympics only at the Little League World Series each August in Williamsport, Pa.
At the Atlanta Games, hometown sponsor Coca-Cola not only has a pin-trading center in the Centennial Olympic village, but another one at Coke's Georgia Freight Depot.
Coke is issuing a new pin every day with only 1,000 available at $9 apiece, and the demand for them is crushing. There have been lines daily at the Centennial Park site.
The Coke pins are exclusive, and sell for $9. Each of the first four days of these Games, the 500 pins at Centennial Park were gone in 45 minutes.
A security guard at the park gate said the location of the pin-trading center is the most-asked question after "Is it free to get in the park?''
It is, and in the pin-trading center, you don't have to buy. Vendors are set up on several tables for trading. You shouldn't go there primarily to buy, but to barter.
Chelsea Clinton stopped there Sunday, but the pins the Secret Service agents wore on their lapels had nothing to do with the Olympics. It was reported the First Daughter left with a couple of pins.
Of course, once you've bought and traded enough, you can purchase the "official'' Atlanta Games pin display towel. It's about the size of a kitchen dish towel, but thicker, and costs $10.
The hottest pin of the Games seems to be the one commemorating the U.S. basketball dream team. Of the 23,000 issued, fewer than 1,000 remained Monday.
Another popular pin at each venue is one with the ``Atlanta '96'' logo in gold on green background, with a figure of the particular sport attached - and at only $5 apiece, they are one of the best retail deals at the Games.
The first Olympic pins were available 100 years ago in Athens, but those were identification badges for Olympic athletes and officials, and made of cardboard. One of those sold at auction a few years ago for $2,250.
The first pins were peddled at the Stockholm Games in 1912, known primarily in this country as the Jim Thorpe Games.
The pin crush in Atlanta is nothing compared with what quadrennial Olympic visitors witnessed at the 1994 Winter Games in Lillehammer, Norway. There, one street was blocked off for pin negotiations only.
The pin tradition supposedly became a major Olympic attachment in another bastion of capitalism, Los Angeles, in 1984. It is estimated that 17 million pins were sold or traded in L.A.
One collector here said Saturday that in Los Angeles, one woman's purse was robbed near a popular pin-trading spot. When she went to security, she was frantic. Her money and credit cards were still there, but someone had taken her pins.
I asked a Canadian man wearing a pin-laden cap Sunday if I could just hold it for a minute, to check the weight. ``It's probably about five pounds,'' he guessed. He might have been right.
There are these pinheads everywhere at the Games. And if you're into pins, using your noggin is something to keep in mind.
One of the first tenets of Olympic pin trading is that it's rude to display a pin you're not willing to trade. Put a pin on your cap and you're like the late Minnie Pearl, with her price tag.
Deciding to try this, I asked an NBC Sports acquaintance for a pin during my visit to the International Broadcast Center on Saturday. Knowing a network pin is a desired commodity, I fastened it to my cap.
I took less than 10 steps outside the security ring around the broadcast center when a man asked if I wanted to trade pins. I said no, but I gave him the pin.
You'd have thought I'd given him tickets to the men's gold-medal basketball game.
If you're looking for pins, you don't have to look far. There are some listed in the classified section of the Atlanta newspaper's daily Olympic section. There are vendors at every venue, and seemingly on every third corner in downtown Atlanta.
People who keep track of such things say about 50 million pins are expected to be sold either before or at the Atlanta Games. That's about 20 per Olympic visitor, many of whom aren't pinheads.
So, what's the attraction?
"They're inexpensive, they're easy to store, they're colorful, they're small, easy to carry,'' said the Canadian collector. "People see your pins and start a conversation, like you did.''
It's sticker shock in Atlanta.
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