Thursday 28 October 2010

28/10: Christmas Pins

A set of Christmas pins will be released on 1 November.

There are 2 individual pins depicting a snowflake and a snowman and also a set containing 5 pins - a Christmas tree, snowflake, snowman, present and wreath.

The individual pins are priced at £4 and limited to 50,000 and the set is priced £30 and limited to 5,000. The designs in the set will not be sold individually.

Image to follow.

Wednesday 27 October 2010

27/10: Lord Mayor's Show Pins

A new set of pins are to be released to celebrate the Lord Mayor of London and the Lord Mayor's show. There are 6 pins in the set which is limited to 5,000 and will retail at £45. The sets will be available online and in the official London 2012 shop and also from the Museum of London.

The 5 pins include images of the Lord Mayor's coach, the Lord Mayor himself and Gog & Magog, the giant protectors of London.

Image to follow soon.

Monday 25 October 2010

25/10: London Boroughs Pin Set

When the London Borough pins were released back in the summer, 100 framed sets were created for VIPs and local councils. Honav have now announced that due to popular demand, 70 of the 100 sets will be made available to the public for £250 per set.

They will be available online and in the store.

Thursday 21 October 2010

21/10: Sainsbury's Pin - Potential Availability

Interesting development today - a reader contacted Sainsbury's and asked about their pins and received the following response

Dear Xxxxxxxxxx

Thanks for your email.  I’m grateful for your interest in our London Paralympics 2012 badge.  We will be selling these in our stores very soon to help raise funds for the Paralympic games and the athletes.

I hope that you can obtain one of the badges to add to your collection.  We’re grateful for you taking the time to get in touch and look forward to seeing you in store again soon.

Kind regards


Customer Manager



It looks like the Sainsbury's pins will be the first sponsor pins to be made generally available 'on the high street'. No word on whether the pins on sale will be the ones issued so far, but there were 160,000 of them!

Hopefully this move will promote the London 2012 pins generally to a wider audience. Time will tell.

Wednesday 20 October 2010

20/10: Pin Meet - Ideas/Interest Wanted

A couple of readers have suggested that it would be good to meet up and trade some pins. This would be a completely unofficial get-together and allow us to put faces to names we have come across during the year. How do you feel about a meet somewhere in London at the back end of November? There's no budget so don't expect a lavish venue!! Suggestions have been the Museum of London or the View Tube at Stratford, but I'm open to ideas. It doesn't matter if it's 2 or 3 of us, or whether we can pack out Wembley, I'd be interested to know if anyone would like to join in.

You can add comments to this blog post or drop me an email at meet@londonpins.co.uk. I'll give it a week or so and then see what the consensus is.

Sorry to those of you who aren't based around London, but we have to start somewhere. Hopefully if we get enough interest to get a sponsor on board (and some of them read this blog), then maybe we can get more adventurous in the New Year. Maybe even something 'official' (whatever that means) for the 500 DTG in March.

So, let me know what you think and I'll see what can be arranged.

Thursday 7 October 2010

7/10: Royal Parks Pins - Update 12/10

News today that a set of 8 pins will be released imminently, possibly next week, to showcase the Royal Parks. The pins will be available individually and as a set. There are 3,000 of each pin being produced, with only 500 sets and the rest issued as single pins.

The pins will initially only be available via the Royal Parks, and I hope to have news soon of how they will be sold (maybe online or in their park locations or maybe both). No word yet on prices either. I believe that any remaining stocks will be on general release next year.

The pins are shown below. The design of each pin is such that the outline shape of the park forms the background and then each pin has an image representing the location along with a green 2012 logo. I like this idea which blends the angular shape motif of other 2012 pins with a geographical representation of the park - well done to the design department. The pins also shun the standard 2012 colours for a subtle forest green (based on the images anyway), which I think makes these an excellent set.


Pin 0111 - The Green Park
Pin 0112 - Hyde Park
Pin 0113 - Kensington Gardens

Pin 0114 - St James's Park
Pin 0115 - Bushy Park
Pin 0116 - Greenwich Park
Pin 0117 - Richmond Park
Pin 0118 - The Regent's Park

Once I have more news on the pricing and availability I'll post it here. I'd recommend not hassling the Royal Parks people at the moment as I understand they're working hard on getting these pins out as soon as they can, and hope to be able to promote them next week. Once they are available though, when you order, please be sure to tell them you heard about them on the London Pins website!

Update 12/10 : The Royal Parks website now has the pins available for sale . Take a look at http://www.royalparksstore.org.uk/prints-42687/2012-pin-badges-gallery.html. Prices are £6 for the individual pins and £60 for the boxed set. Remember, there are only 500 of the sets available. as mentioned previously, please mention my website if you place an order, it helps me if the retailers know my website is promoting the pins. Thanks!

Friday 1 October 2010

1/10: Premiums Workshop Pin

On 27th September LOCOG ran a 'Premiums Workshop' for their Licensees and Sponsors. I understand that at this workshop, the audience got to see some of the upcoming merchandise. The attendees were given a pin to mark the workshop which is shown below. It's a huge pin - 53x65mm and has 2 pins on the back and is numbered LOC0011. There were only 250 of these made which makes it the rarest pin to date.