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.