Wednesday 16 March 2011

16/3: Fake Pins

In the last couple of days, 2 separate readers in 2 different countries have both sent me emails which they have received offering them London 2012 pins. These emails state they are offering official London pins but the emails did not come from Honav, the only official licensee who can maufacture retail pins.

The emails included pictures or the pins that were available and I have reproduced them here. I obviously don't have permission from the originator of the emails to do that, but I think the end justifies the means this time. The pins being offered are fakes and do not originate from the official manufacturer and honest collectors and traders are paying high prices for these on auction sites.

You will see from the images that they are offering rare ODA pins such as the builder and environment pins. Click here for my post on these fakes back in December 2010. They are also offering the sold out mascot pins. Click on the images to enlarge them.


The white areas in the images are where I have blanked out the manufacturer detail. I'm not here to name names, I'm just trying to warn honest collectors that a number of fakes are around and identify the pins that might be suspect.

Remember that all new retail pins come on a backing card with the Olympic hologram to prove authenticity. Any new retail pin offered in a plastic bag should be queried. To check what the backing cards look like, please take a look at my website. Click here for the link. As far as possible I list the version or colour of the backing card associated with the pin.

Please look out for these pins when you buy or trade. If you are trading with someone new to you, ask for photographs of their pins being offered, not a generic picture or one from my site with the site address cut off. 

5 comments:

Pippin said...

Unfortunately, these pins look very good. From the pictures, nothing obvious screams out "fake" perhaps with the exception of the text missing from the ODA Environmental pin. Most worryingly (from the first picture) these pins are being offered with minimum order quantities of 800 at a time.

Acer said...

If pin collectors just buy the retail pins with cardboard backings that have the Olympic hologram
on them they should be fine. A lot of the ones on
ebay these days do not have the backings which should be like an alarm going off as a warning.

Anonymous said...

You can warn buyers but they don't always listen. The person who tried to sell the phoney Hard Hat 2012 pin is still selling pins without the cardboard backing and people are still bidding on them. Whats with that!

Anonymous said...

I HAVE PINS THAT WERE GIVEN TO ME ON SITE DOES ANY ONE WANT TO BUY THEM

Anonymous said...

Hi Anonymous, happy to talk to you about what you have. You can get me at info@londonpins.co.uk

Paul.