Now that I've recovered from a fantastic Olympic Games and man-flu, I thought I'd put together a quick review of my perceptions of the pins and pin trading during the Games. Please remember, this is only a quick round up of what I saw and hopefully over the next few weeks I will be able to pull together details of most of the pins that were around.
Firstly I start by apologising for the lack of news updates and tweets during the Games. I had intended to track what was new day-by-day and publish the information for the benefit of those who were at the venues and those who couldn't make it. Even though experienced collectors had warned me of the frantic activity that would be seen, I never dreamed that the days would be quite so tiring and leave so little time to post. Between going to events with my family (and we were very lucky to see some fantastic sports), pin trading and travelling I never seemed to have the time to collate and post what was happening. Looking at the forum though it seems that people were sharing news where they could.
Anyway, my overriding memory of pin trading during the Games was how much I enjoyed meeting and talking to members of the public who had never seen pin trading before. I made a conscious decision on the first day that if I was going to enjoy my trading, then I needed to keep away from those that were seeking to gather pins to sell. It seemed to me that some 'collectors' were there with a different motive than me and a different attitude toward those that had pins. Once I appreciated that, and avoided them, I had a great time. Did I get as many pins as some - no, did I get all the hard to get ones - no, did I make some duff trades where I gave too much away - yes, did I have a great time and fulfil my original objectives - absolutely. To all those that came to my table and traded or just said 'hello' - thank you, I hope your enjoyed our brief meeting as much as I did.
As for the pins, it seemed that some companies really pushed the boat out with lots of great pins that their staff and guests were happy to trade. Dow is probably worthy of a mention with some great 'in-demand' pins such as the submarine pin, weather pin and the Hopiary pins. Visa had lots of new designs, however thier representatives were a little reluctant to trade. Lloyds and EDF kept up their excellent track record with new pins. There were new pins from Ticketmaster, Cadbury's, GlaxoSmithKline, UPS, Coca-Cola, Airwave and lots more.
There were a bunch of media pins as well as masses of NOC pins too.
I plan to reach out to collectors to gather information on as many pins as possible and update the website with the details. Please bear with me over the next weeks and months as I carry out this task and in the end we'll have a full catalogue of the London 2012 pins.
I plan to set up some more pin meets before Christmas to try and keep all those that want to continue their collecting in touch with each other and see if we can keep the momentum going.
It will all kick off again in a couple of weeks for the Paralympics so there's no chance to rest just yet.