Wednesday 27 April 2011

27/4: New Mascot Pins

It seems as we get nearer to Wenlock and Mandeville's first birthday next month, they are appearing on more pins. Following on from last week's 'name' pins featuring the mascots, 4 more new sets of pins have been announced.

The first set combines each mascot with an iconic piece of London street furniture and uses the 'dynamic' line and colour branding seen on the original pictogram designs.

Pin 0498

Pin 0485

Each pin is limited to 100,000 pieces and the RRP is £6.50

The other 3 sets feature the mascots in running, finishing and winning poses...

Pin 0530

Pin 0487
Pin 0503


Pin 0491

Pin 0500
Pin 0490

Each of these pins is limited to 10,000 and cost £6.50 for the running and wining poses and £6.50 for the finishing tape pose.

Availability should be this week for all 8 pins.

Update: 27/4/11 @ 11pm: All these pins are available at Glamorous Living



Tuesday 26 April 2011

26/4: New Mascot Pins This Week

Just a 'teaser' today to say that I'll have news and pictures of some mascot pins that will be available from Thursday.

Check back here tomorrow after 5pm for more details.

Wednesday 20 April 2011

20/4: Furry Pins

For those that haven't seen or, more importantly, touched the new bird pins yet, you may be interested to find a new feature on London 2012 pins. Fur.

Some of the bird pins contain a furry material section instead of the soft enamel usually seen.


In this example - the goldfinch pin - you can see the back, belly and neck of the bird use a material with a very slight nap to it.

20/4: Afternoon Tea and New Mascot Pins

Two new sets of pins have been announced today. The first is on the subject of Afternoon Tea. The pins show a purple teapot silhouette along with various tea items such as cakes, scones and china.


These pins are limited to 5,000 pieces and the set is priced at £35. I understand this is a boxed set and the pins will not be available individually. I believe Glamorous Living will be carrying these pins.


The other set are the 2 mascots looking out from behind their names.



These pins are limited to 10,000 pieces and are priced at £6.00. I understand these will be available at Glamorous Living and Pins & Things.


Finally an update on the Age Pin announced on Monday. This will be priced at £5 and should be available from Glamorous Living and Pins & Things.

All pins should be available from 27th April.

Tuesday 19 April 2011

19/4: Borough Pins - Sales Update

An update on the availability of the London Borough pins.

The Lambeth pin becomes the second pin to now be officially out of stock. This follows Southwark's sell-out previously. Remember this means that the pin is no longer available for retailers to order from the manufacturer. There may still be stocks of pins with retailers.

Still with the London Borough pins...

The limited edition framed set (limited to 100 pieces) has also sold out. Not bad at £250 a set!

Monday 18 April 2011

18/4: New Diversity Pin - Age

The next pin in the diversity range has been issued. This one celebrates Age and shows a person at four stages of life.


Unlike the previous diversity issues, this time there is only one pin but it does show both Games logos.

Issue size is 5,000 for this one, no details of price or retailers for now.

Sunday 17 April 2011

17/4: Cadbury Pins - Spots vs. Stripes

Two new pins from Cadbury's have appeared. These pins promote their Spots vs. Stripes programme which aims to get the country to split into two teams and compete in mini games.

CAD0003 and CAD0004

Friday 15 April 2011

15/4: Olympin Collectors' Club - Special Offer

The team that run the Olympin Club have made a very special offer to UK pin collectors and readers of www.londonpins.co.uk. For a limited time they are offering a 2-year discounted membership to the club which offers
  • Quarterly Newsletter featuring memorabilia news, club features and announcements
  • Annual member directory listing contact details for every member along with their collecting specialties to help with trading
  • Annual membership pin, which for the next 2 years will feature the London 2012 logo.
The Olympin club has worked with the US Olympic Committee and approached LOCOG in order to get permission to use the logo. That makes these club membership pins official London 2012 pins to be included in the catalogue.

Here is an image of the 2011 pin. The 2012 pin will also contain the London 2012 logo.


You can read more about the Olympin club - click here

The normal cost of a one year membership to the club is US$25, but the offer to UK readers of this website is US$35 for the 2011 AND 2012 membership years. So, if nothing else, you would be getting the 2 club pins for a little over £20. This offer is available until 9th May 2011. The offer may be extended or the price may be increased, but they guarantee, this is the lowest price that this offer will be. Please note this offer is to UK residents only.

To take up this offer, you need to
a) Complete a member details sheet which will form the basis of your directory entry
b) Pay the one-off subscription by Paypal.

To complete the member details sheet, click here to open a template from Google Docs and follow the instructions on the first page.

I've tried to create a template based on Olympin's paper form, so if there are any problems, drop me an email and I'll try to fix it for you.

Member's who join before the 9th May, will be included in the 2011 directory and should see their membership pins dispatched in May.

I'm not receiving any payment from Olympin or any free pins for advertising this offer. It's a genuine use of the website to promote a society that may be of interest to London 2012 pin collectors.

Wednesday 13 April 2011

13/4: Rainbow Pin

Another new pin is due out next week. The 'Rainbow Heart' pin is being issued to celebrate the 'Out Of A Rainbow' theme associated with Wenlock and Mandeville.


The issue size is 20,000 and the price £5. This is pin 193. No details of which retailers will be stocking this pin yet.

This pin is available now for pre-order from Glamorous Living.

Tuesday 12 April 2011

12/4: Birds

Two new sets of pins are to be launched next week. The common theme is 'Birds'. There are 8 pins in each set depicting Garden Birds and Water Birds.









Each pin is limited to 5,000 pieces and the RRP is £6.50 per pin.

Initially the pins will be available individually on card. At a future date, two framed sets of these pins will be available, each containing 8 pins. There is no date or price available for these set.

Update 13/4: These sets are available to pre-order now from Glamorous Living.

Monday 11 April 2011

11/4: Pin Meet Report

We held the "2nd Unofficial London 2012 Pin Collectors 'Pin Meet'" on Saturday. Turnout was 50% up on the first meeting just before Christmas. Ok, that means 6 people instead of 4, but those that attended had a worthwhile time.
  • Honav kindly turned up for the start of the meeting to canvass feedback and listen to our thoughts on the pin programme.
  • Lloyds very kindly offered each attendee a Lloyds 500 day to go pin
  • A member of Olympin told us about the club and it's benefits and offered a discounted 2 year membership to the attendees which includes an official Olympin club pin featuring the London 2012 logo for 2011 and 2012.
  • Apart form all that, some very good trades were made and we each made valuable additions to our collections.
The venue was the Railway Tavern pub in Stratford, and what an excellent venue it was. Spacious with plenty of space to trade and the owners were into their pins. All of us agreed it's a perfect venue for our next meet.

Speaking of which, I'd like to suggest that the 3rd Unofficial pin meet takes place on Saturday 23rd July 2011. This is over the weekend of the 2011 BP Open weekend. If there's enough support for having this pin meet then I may see if we can register it with the Open Weekend programme to get some promotion.

So, over to you - who's ready to attend the next pin meet? You can contact me using the email link in the right hand menu.

Sunday 10 April 2011

10/4: Crowns - Update (3)

The Crowns story continues. Another update over the weekend.

The cheaper Crowns set will not now be produced. That means that the one issued last week is the only Crowns set that will be available. It will be priced at £150 and there will not be another way of getting these pins as there are no plans to issue them on card.

Saturday 9 April 2011

8/4: Olympic Village Pins

It looks like each time an Olympic Park venue is finished, a pair of pins may be released. The first residential plot has been completed and two new Olympic Village pins were mentioned on the message board earlier this week.

A reader sent photos of two Olympic Village pins today.




These pins are similar to the velodrome ones issued recently. Like those pins, these new ones include the tagline 'A great team effort' and come in both Olympic and Paralympic versions. These are pins ODA0021. These pins share the same number apparently which is different to the other ODA pins where Olympic and Paralympic versions have consecutive numbers.

Wednesday 6 April 2011

6/4: Crowns - Update (2)

Some more detail on the Crowns sets...

The current set, when it comes back on sale, will retail for £150. There have been 300 produced to date and more may be produced depending on sales.

Another set of the same pins will be produced with a different box and frame, this will retail for around £50. I'm assuming that there will be 4,700 of these sets as none of the 5,000 pins are planned to be sold individually.

The deluxe set is back on sale at Glamorous Living, no date on when the new set will be available.

6/4: Pin Meet This Saturday

For those of you interested in attending the "2nd Unofficial London 2012 Pin Collectors 'Pin Meet'", here are the details...

Date: Saturday 9th April 2011
Time: 2.30pm
Venue: The Railway Tavern, 131 Angel Lane, Stratford, E15 1DB
Nearest Station: Stratford (National Rail, Underground, DLR)
Cost: Free, but as we're using the pub for nothing, buying a drink would be appreciated. Here's a link to their website http://railwaytavernhotel.co.uk

Please note that this is a different venue and time from the original invitation a few weeks ago.

This is a perfect opportunity to meet fellow collectors, put faces to names you've only seen on the message boards and maybe try your hand at pin trading.

If you would like more information or want to confirm you're coming, please drop me an email info@londonpins.co.uk.

We hope to see lots of you there on Saturday.

Monday 4 April 2011

4/4: Crowns Set - Update


The Crowns set that was to be available from today has been withdrawn temporarily. The price quoted originally was £50 for the framed set. However it appears that the sets that were made available today were actually in a deluxe frame which was to be available at a higher price than £50.

I understand that only Glamorous Living have taken orders so far, and they have confirmed to me that any pre-orders will be honoured at the original price stated. Until the matter is cleared up, they have removed the set from sale.

I believe that the framed set shown above WILL be available, but at an increased price. I also believe that the set will be issued in an amended frame at £50 in due course.

So it appears if you managed to get a pre-order in before today, you will be the proud owner of deluxe framed set at a reduced price.

I'll post more details when I have them.

Sunday 3 April 2011

4/4: London Pins and Inside The Games

From today, not only will you be able to find London 2012 pin information on www.londonpins.co.uk but also on another site - www.insidegamescollecting.biz.

This new site is part of the Inside The Games organisation - the number 1 Olympic news website.

Why, you may ask, am I advertising another pin site? Well, it's because insidegamescollecting is powered by London Pins. They are using some of my website as their source!

Late last year, they approached me, and having explained how they would like to cover Olympic collectables, asked me to run a pin collecting section for them on their website. Whilst I didn't want to close down London Pins given the support and encouragement you all have given me, I welcomed the chance to take the catalogue out to a wider audience.

So the solution we came up with is that London Pins will still continue and develop but elements of my site will be provided to insidegamescollecting to be displayed under their brand.

They will have the basic retail, sponsor, internal and bid catalogues as well as the pin articles. They will also have a news page based on my blog and a message board/forum.

I didn't want to lose the current forum given it's activity and history, but regular readers may want to go to the new forum just to register their ids. It's obviously up to you where you want to post discussions in the future. They've asked me to moderate the new forum - so don't think you can get away from me!

Just so you all know, this is not a commercial agreement. I am not getting any financial reward for supplying the data to insidegamescollecting. It's still a labour of love for me over and above my 9 to 5 job. I'm just hoping that the new site and the name of London Pins will reach an established Olympic audience.

So take a look at www.insidegamescollecting.biz and forum.insidethegames.biz, and see what you think.

Remember though, www.londonpins.co.uk is still around and, with your support, will continue to provide a comprehensive service to all pin collectors and traders up to and during the Games.