Obtaining Sponsor Pins:
By Mike Yazdani (September 1998)
It has been very frustrating for most collectors of Official Sponsor pins.
Official Team Millennium Partners for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, have
been allocated specific rights and opportunities to promote their association
with the Games, but they also have limitations. Their contract with SOCOG
"Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games" actually precludes them
from selling their merchandise outside their company. Unless they obtain
prior approval from SOCOG they are unable to sell their Olympic products to
the general public.
Lots of sponsors will usually produce only enough pins for their
staff to wear them at work and outside work to promote their company and many
of them will not part with their pins. Every day sponsors are receiving
enormous amount of phone calls and letters from avid pin collectors around
the world requesting these pins. Some pin collectors are even using different
names to increase their chance of obtaining pins! To mail sponsors requesting
pins has always been a more successful way than calling them directly. As
pins are not what they are there for, they have more important things to do
than answering phone calls requesting pins.
Some of the sponsors do not want to know or hear from pin collectors. However;
few of the sponsors such as Ansett, Traveland, Bonlac, Panasonic, Samsung and
Fosters have found ways to sell their pins deirectly to the public, some such
as AMP, Xerox, or Visa do not mind to give away a pin or two to every
household that they receive letter from, and some such as Channel Seven or
Fairfax are holding monthly draw and giving away a few pins to public. So it
may worth your a while to sit down and write a nice letters to sponsors.
For those of you who are interested in media pins, keep listening
to "2UE" radio station (Radio Active 954 AM), they are in process of finalising
details of a PIN program in the near future with the SOCOG. As soon as SOCOG
approve their plans they will begin promoting the sale of their pins on the
redio station. They will be announcing a 1900 phone number that collectors
can call to give their names, address and credit card details to purchase pins.
Also just recently American sponsors have got permission to make
Sydney 2000 pins outside Australia and they have been producing a lot of pins.
Happy Pin Collecting and Good Luck!
A Quick Guide to Pin Collecting on the Internet:
By Dr. Michael J. Miller (September 1998)
How many different Olympic pin web sites are there on the Internet? At last
count, I had over 100 on my Trading Sites list! That's a lot of surfing to do
in one evening! Additionally, there are dozens of web sites for NOCs, the IOC,
Olympic history and news, memorabilia, and other topics that provide enough
information about the Olympic Games to make you an expert in the field. And
let's not forget the official sites for the upcoming Games, such as Sydney,
Salt Lake City, and Athens, as well as all of the bid cities hoping to bring
the Olympic flame to their own location in 2006 and beyond. After surfing 150
plus web sites, you may want to explore a variety of newsgroups, mailing
lists and chat rooms. A newsgroup is a global bulletin board where you can
read and submit postings about a specific topic, such as the availability of
a new pin design, upcoming pin shows, or trading in general. Newsgroups are
normally accessed through the use of a news reader or web browser. Probably
the best newsgroup for Olympic pin collectors is the one I started about a
year ago called rec.collecting.pins. Another interesting newsgroup worth
visiting is rec.sport.olympics. A mailing list is similar to a newsgroup
except that postings are sent to each mailing list member as an e-mail
message. Most mailing lists are private but can usually be joined just by
asking! The most popular mailing list for pin collecting is Pinheads, and
you can join by sending an e-mail message to
pinhead@pinheads.net. Chat rooms
are venues where one can converse (via typing) with other individuals in
real time. Chat rooms can be accessed using an Internet Relay Chat (IRC)
program, through a web site via Java script, or within commercial servers
(eg, AOL). You can access the Pinheads Network Chat Room by choosing the
#pinheads channel on the irc.webmaster.com server. They normally meet every
Sunday starting at 9:00 PM EST. Alternatively, you can join by choosing the
Chat section in the www.pinheads.net web site.
The extent of all Olympic pin and Olympic Game-related web sites are too
numerous to be listed here. However, you can start by visiting my site
(
http://www.servtech.com/~mignatz/olympics.html) for links to all the
sections discussed above. All you'll need are a couple of hours and a lot of
imagination! Happy surfing and happy trading!
mignatz@servtech.com
http://www.servtech.com/~mignatz/olympics.html
Australia, Why are sponsor pins so hard to get in Sydney?
By Mr. Peter Forrest (September 1998)
Every new collector in Sydney is told that "sponsor pins are hot". So naturally they go chasing the sponsors for pins.
What they find is that all sponsor employees have also been told that "sponsor pins are hot", and tenaciously they hang
on to them. I have seen sponsor pins on cards which tell the recipient to "hang on to this valuable item as they will
skyrocket in value during the Olympic Games". Internal memos to employees also encourage this hoarding mentality.
The Australian sponsors have no experience to guide them in this.
My daughter and I once visited the office of a sponsor at Homebush after they had produced a pin to commemorate the
demolition of a tower. "Could we trade for one?" we asked. "Are you crazy, I've got 10 of them, and I'm going to sell
them for $1,000 each to Americans during the Games", came the reply. We struck the same attitude even from
Australian employees of a US based sponsor near the airport only to find we could get the same pin much easier by
writing to their HQ in the States. So, (through no fault of their own) Sydney collectors are finding it very tough to
obtain enough sponsor pins to start pin trading hobby.
My daughter and I started collecting late last year have managed
to scrape together a reasonable bunch of sponsor pins to trade, but at the swap meet on Saturday, we could only do one
trade. We were approached many times by new collectors (and some dealers) wanting to buy pins. It is because of this
difficulty of obtaining sponsor pins that many Sydney pin collectors have turned to countdown pins.
At the Olympic Games, if you are American pin collector, be prepared for a lot of sponsor employees approaching you
with their pins chasing you for a fair few of those valuable US dollars, that is unless we Australian collectors can't
shake them down and put a lid on the spiral first.
ericorp@ozemail.com.au
http://www.forestconfectionery.com
Sponsor Pins:
By Tristan Jackson (September 1998)
If you are collecting sponsorship pins and the head office of a
company wont send you any try writting to local branches. I always offer to
pay for pins and I also say that if they cant give me any maybe a staff
member may want to trade with me. If anybody does send me a pin i always
write back to say thank you.
mjackson@pnc.com.au
Have you Visited "PinWorkx Museum"?
Sydney Pin Fever (July 1998)
If you ever come to Sydney make sure to visit the world's first Pin Museum
which is located at "PinWorkx", 6-8 Playfair Street, The Rocks, Sydney.
This Museum presents a colorful and fun display of Olympic pins and other themed
pins from all around the world.
These displays include sports pins, McDonalds pins, Hard Rock Cafe pins and
Coca-Cola pins to name a few. In addition displays also show how pins are made.
Some displays represent private collections and Olympic athletes such as
Murry Rose.
OneAhoo@yahoo.com
Best pins to look for:
By Mike Yazdani (August 1998)
It looks like the Sydney 2000 "1000 Days to Go" pin has become the most
wanted pin. I have been asked by many of the collectors about the "1000 Days
to Go" pin. It has been selling for a few hundred dollar. The pin was released
close to Christmas and most of the collectors were busy with their Christmas
shopping, therefor lots of them missed out and the majority of the pins ended
up in the hands of a few major collectors, which are trying to control the
market. Countdown pins are the hottest pins now, but what about after the
games?!
I think that this is crazy, why a collector would pay a few hundred
dollars for a pin, which 3000 of them were made only a short while ago! With
that kind of money or even less a wise collector can buy other pins that go
up in value a lot more in the future.
One very important point that collectors should keep in mind is that
some pins will increase in value over night to extreme highs but with this
market being very voilitite they can decrease just as quickly. Collectors
have to know that pins which manufacturer made over 2000 of them are not very
rare and sooner or later they will come onto the market with more availablity.
I will give you some examples;
1- Aminco - Puzzle Gold, 3 PC Framed - Pin Number 1023
Limited Edition 2000, Made in Australia
Cost is $90.00
2- Aminco - Puzzle Gold, 4 PC Framed - Pin Number 1024
Limited Edition 2000, Made in Australia
Cost is $100.00
I think these pin sets will be very valuable in future. But somehow pin
collectors overlook this and prefer to buy an individual pin which is more
expensive than the nice individually numbered Aluminum framed sets. And it is
almost impossible to copy or make a fake of these sets.
I will Also recommend the first framed set of "Benson House" 26 Sydney
2000 Pewter pins that they released. This set is also individually numbered.
Only 2000 sets have been made and are in a very nice and attractive wooden
frame. Some of the pins in this set have already been withdrawn and the set
cost is around $300.00.
ENJOY PIN COLLECTING AND THE WORLD OF TRADING!
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