BEIJING (NEXSTAR) — For some, pin trading at the Olympics is as exciting as the Games themselves although because of the exclusion of spectators in Beijing, in 2022 there’s no one participating.
“All of a sudden, you realize the Olympics are on and you’re not there,” says Doug Todd who began pin trading at the Los Angeles Games in 1984. “Everybody I know kinda knows I go to the Olympics and they’re like, ‘Wow, you must be really bummed.'”
Luckily, Todd has traded pins in Beijing — 14 years earlier at the 2008 Summer Games.
“It was the Olympics where you felt most like a rockstar,” Todd recalls. “You walk around — I would have a vest of pins on — people from all over would just come and stare at you and want to take a picture with you.”
Janet Grissom started her pin-trading career at the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City. She says at that time she was trading hundreds of pins every day.
“They called me the ‘pin queen’ there,” explains Grissom. “In my mind, that was probably the best trading Olympics I ever had.”
But these collectors say the dark cloud of a pinless Beijing Games comes with a silver lining.
“I had about 2,000 pins I was going to being with me to trade,” says Grissom. “Instead, I went and sold on eBay. I sold about 1,800 pins on eBay and that was like a second job. And all I can say is that Paris had better happen.”