BEIJING// A few smiling men squat behind boards covered with small glittering objects on the fringes of Beijing's Olympic Green drawing a curious crowd. The shiny objects are "pins" - small Olympic Games-related badges issued by countries' teams to their athletes and by media organisations to their journalists - and they have spawned a subculture of collectors who travel to every Olympic Games to "trade", or swap, their pins for new ones.
"We travel to every Games, trade pins and meet new friends. The pins are the common denominator and bridge the language barrier. It gives people something to do and spreads goodwill," said Tim Jameson, 61, from Roanoke, Virginia, one of the several collectors present. Around his neck hangs his current favourite, a pin in the shape of a TV camera issued by the American NBC broadcaster, but he is also pleased with his most recent acquisition - a Beijing 2008 pin that features the Forbidden City, the former imperial residence in the heart of the Chinese capital.
"I used to be an architect so I like anything with buildings on them," he said, holding up the pin. As he speaks, an official with Team GB, the British Olympic Team, comes out and proffers a pin of the garish pink logo for the London Olympics in 2012. London pins have not yet flooded the market and so Mr Jameson accepts, inviting the official to choose a pin from his collection in return. Although such collectors as Mr Jameson are not selling their pins - a notice on his collection reads "For trade only, not for sale" in both English and Chinese - the most valuable Olympic pins can fetch thousands of dollars.
"The most expensive are from the early Olympics like the 1904 summer Olympics in St Louis, USA - there are only about five in the world and four are in the hands of the big collectors," said Ross Baxter, 61, from Roslyn, Scotland. Like the other collectors, he is only trading for the moment rather than selling - but he said that could change over the course of the Olympics as interest in the pins reaches fever pitch.
"The value of the pins goes up over the course of the two weeks of the Games and drops off dramatically when they finish. It remains to be seen if the Chinese authorities will allow us to sell," he said. Good money can be made. Among pin collectors, the 1998 winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, has legendary status. "It was an absolute clean-up. The Japanese would buy anything, and the most basic pins were going for US$10 [Dh37] each. I only had about 500 pins with me, but some of the guys had thousands and made enough money to buy a house. I missed out there - the story of my life. But overall the pins allow me to pay my way around the world, and that's all I can ask really," Mr Baxter said.
He became hooked on pins while working as a parks inspector in Calgary, Canada, when the winter Olympics were held there in 1988, and he traded a pin with a Taiwanese skier. He said his best-ever trade was with an athlete from the Solomon Islands, which lie in the Pacific Ocean to the east of Papua New Guinea and have just a handful of players on their team. Now he is hunting the "Asahi Cat", a hard-to-find pin from Japan's Asahi broadcasting corporation and hopes one of his Olympic contacts will be able to wangle him a day pass to the Olympic Village, where the athletes are staying.
"If I can wangle that I will really clean up," he said with a grin. He breaks off to trade pins with a young Chinese woman volunteering at the Olympic Games as a steward. "The quality of the Beijing 2008 pins is excellent. All the pins are made in China anyway - the Chinese are the masters at making things," he said. Arab pins are harder to come by, Mr Baxter said, although they do exist. Mohammed Rashid Al Buot, the UAE's ambassador to China, was wearing the UAE's Olympic pin when The National interviewed him this month. The design featured the Olympic rings with the UAE flag in the shape of a flame above them.
But the Arab media tend to bond together under the Arab States Broadcasting Union (ASBU), which produces one pin for all their members, Mr Baxter said. The pin has a basic design, featuring the ASBU logo on the right and the Beijing 2008 logo on the left. "It's a bit boring for us - there's nothing nicer than seeing pins you've never seen before. I guess pin-making is about the last of the expenses you pay for when preparing for an Olympics. But pins are also cultural exports and countries and broadcasters miss a trick by not getting them made," he said.
@Email:tspender@thenational.ae