The Unknown, Underground Olympic Currency
Right now, as we sit at home watching the Olympic Games, with all their drama, scandal and pomp, there are people trading and speculating in a commodity created by our collective national pride. It isn’t gold metals, or antimicrobial body suits, it is Olympic pins.
Every Olympics since the first modern games in 1896 has had a corresponding set of official pins. Every athlete gets pins with his or her country and sport. There are also official pins for each host city and, of course, pins for each Olympic sponsor.
A lot has been written about the cute habit of trading pins. Quirky hobbyists challenge each other to see who can collect the most. This is not about those people. Thank goodness...they sound like a bore.
This is about the few pin-treprenuers (™!) that play the system, speculate demand and make a pretty penny doing it.
I will let a friend, Tracy Frank, second generation pin-vestor (™ again!) and veteran of 5 Olympiads and counting, explain: “Before every Olympics my father and I buy random collectible pins in bulk.” Literally buckets of these shiny keepsakes are sold online and at collectable shops. “Then we trade these pins for every good Olympic pin we can find,” she continued.
The trick is to define what is a good pin. There are a few factors that affect desirability of each pin. Since pins are made in accordance to the number of athletes a country has competing in the games, scarcity and supply play a roll. Chad and Somalia, large countries with only two Olympians each, would be placed highly by this metric. Demand is shaped mostly by a combination of population/wealth of the country combined with popularity of the sport. Lastly, nationalism and the culture of collecting seem to play a roll, “U.S.A always buys the most, then the U.K., then Japan,” Tracy said, “but almost every country buys some.”
But, that is only a part of the speculators calculation. There is an art to the science of pins as well. A big upset, dramatic headline or viral story can spark demand for pins that might have otherwise been low value (think Fijian rugby, Tongan TaeKwonDo, or Russian...anyting).
Ironically, the most valuable pins historically have not been official Olympic pins at all. “At my first Olympics in Atlanta,” Tracy told me, “a local burger joint made unsanctioned pins that had as onion rings as the Olympic rings. The IOC tried to take them out of circulation and it became a media story, so values skyrocketed.” Final price for this record setter, “around $800 a piece.”
Some home runs are more obvious. This year’s early standout? A pin from a Japanese sponsor that looks like Pikachu of Pokemon fame, which is currently selling for around $150.
Every night, after long days of spectating and speculating, Tracy and her father Brad sit down in front of their laptop and meticulously post the pins on EBay, so impulse buyers like you and I can own a piece, albeit a tiny one, of Olympic history. “The key is to sell as much as we can when the games are taking place, because after the closing ceremony, the pins are basically worthless...until the next Olympics rolls around,” Tracy said.
Right about now I know what you are thinking. Get to the point. How much do they make? Relax, I am going to tell you. Don’t be so impatient, it is not becoming of you.
“The average pin sells for around ten to fifteen dollars,” Tracy told me. “We usually go home with about $10,000 in gross sales for each Olympics. The big exception was China, where we made closer to $25,000.”
OK, so the pin game is not gonna buy a summer home in the Hamptons, or even one in Long Island for that matter. Still, your main and really only expense is your plane ticket and accommodations for the Olympics. For some people, traveling to exotic location to watch their country compete against athletes from every corner of the globe is a bucket list experience. I am sure some people kick said bucket before they have a chance to experience the Olympic magic first hand due to monetary constraints. If only these people knew about the value of the ubiquitous, seemingly useless enamel and metal Olympic pins.
Olympic dreams do come true. For athletes it comes from extreme talent, expert training and grueling hard work. For the rest of us, it only takes ambition, intuition and luck. As Tracy and her dad have shown us, sometimes Olympic gold comes not in the form of metals but rather, a Pokemon Olympic pin.
