13/2: Local Leaders Pin

Those of you that signed up to the Local Leaders programme on the London 2012 website may have received an email today inviting you to email for a pin badge.


I have no idea what the pin looks like or what sort of reference it will have.

More details and an image when the pin arrives.

26/1: New pins spotted at the pin meet

At Saturday's pin meet, Honav supplied some frames of pins displaying forthcoming designs that hadn't been seen before. On one particular frame, there were some pins which caught my eye.

There were two logo pins in metal which were stunning. One in frosted gold and one in frosted silver. Possibly the best form of the logo pin I've seen to date. The gold one was marked 'Olympic Torch Relay'.  There was no clue as to whether these would be retail pins or restricted to a small group of people.

The other logo pin used the torch infill seen in some of the original torch relay promotional material. Again an excellent looking pin, but no idea of availability.

Then there were a series of mascot pins. The first, carrying on the torch theme, was Wenlock running with the Olympic torch. He's dressed in a white shirt with a 2012 logo on it and a pair of white shorts. Maybe it's his legs, or maybe the shorts are long, but to me there's a feeling of a 1948 character with a 2012 torch. That's not a criticism, I think it looks fantastic. Once again I've changed my mind and I have a new favourite pin. I sincerely hope this one is retail.

Next we have 2 metallic Wenlocks. Again, gold and silver have been used as the key colours. This time the mascot is all one colour - including his logo and bracelets. Once again, no clue as to whether we're looking at retail pins or not.

Not to be outdone, Mandeville has 'blinged-up', and comes in both the traditional and Union flag colours but this time with a sparkle effect. I sense these two are retail pins.

The final two pins are most definitely retail in may opinion. They come from a set of cockney rhyming slang pins. As a Londoner, I normally cringe at this sort of thing and have flash backs to Dick van Dyke and Mary Poppins, but the designers have dodged that bullet with excellent ideas and humour. For example, the slang for telephone - 'Dog and Bone' shows a dog using a bone as a phone. Ok, not side splitting, but a clever idea in my opinion.

So, a small flavour of what might be coming. The usual caveats apply to these sort of sneak-peeks, in that not all the pins may go into production etc, and if they do, who knows if they will be generally available. However on the plus side, every one of these pins were on a board with retail pins which have already seen the light of day, so there's hope.

27/9: Christmas Pins

News tonight of possible London 2012 Christmas pins. I'm not sure if these are going to be retail, but it seems that a set of 5 or 6 pins in a long presentation box with a snowflake overlay have been spotted. More details if I get them.

26/6: Quick Roundup

I know I've been a bit quiet this month, pin news has been quiet and home life has been hectic, but here's a quick round up of some news (most of which you probably already know!)

eBay has been active with BMW pins!! Anything from around £16 to £64 for the new BMW pin.

A Lloyds Banking Group pin has surfaced on eBay (note it's not Lloyds TSB). It was gold coloured with what appeared to be 3 stacked boxes on it. The number was LLY0001 - so a new numbering series (not the LTSB series anymore) which reflects the changes at Lloyds over the last year or so.

I've heard rumours of a London Buildings set to be released soon - this isn't the London at Night set re-issue, but new designs I believe.

Finally, you all know that it's 2 Years To Go on July 27th, but hands up who noticed that it's 750 Days to Go on July 8th? I wonder if we'll see a pin for this countdown milestone too?

I'm hoping that the new issues will pick up over the next few weeks until 27 July. Remember last year, there were quite a few pins issued around the 3YTG mark, so here's hoping.

24/5: More Wenlock & Mandeville pins

It appears than on Mascot launch day, as well as the limited edition pins released in the online shop, 2 more Wenlock and Mandeville pins (numbers 232 and 233) were issued to LOCOG/ODA staff. These pins are from an issue size of 5,000 each and appear to be numbered as part of the standard range rather than from the internal numbering series.

Given their numbers and issue size, it looks like they may be released to the public at a later date?

Thanks to a reader for this information, and hopefully I can add some photos soon.

Update 24/5: A reliable source indicates that these two pins should become available at the 2 year to go mark.

4/3: London Landmark (Borough) Pins

Looks like the London Borough pins are very close now. Digging around on the internet I came across the London Councils website (www.londoncouncils.gov.uk). There's a section on meetings and specifically about a Leaders Committee meeting next Tuesday (9th March). There's an agenda item about London 2012 and in a document related to that meeting there's information relating to the unveiling of the pins.

For copyright reasons, I cannot reproduce the text, however the document may be viewed under the following link. Click the link (page open in a new window) and then click on the document.

http://www.londoncouncils.gov.uk/committees/agenda.htm?pk_agenda_items=3999

So it looks like the Borough pins will be with us soon. Maybe we'll get to see what they look like before long.

It was a similar document on the same website that, last year, gave the first information about the London Landmarks vote.

25/1: Regional Pins

Just a quick update this evening. Thanks to a response from one of the regional committees and an email from a reader, I can confirm that there are no regional pins being made for the London region (REG0003) and the West Midlands region (REG0011).

I'll leave them in the catalogue for completeness, but update the comments this week.

Better news is that it looks like the 33 London Borough pins may be out in March according to an unconfirmed comment from the London Development Agency. Remember this is not yet confirmed by LOCOG, so we'll have to see.

12/1: Mini News Update

A few snippets of information in what appears to be a quiet pin time at the moment...

Those of you hoping for a 900 Days To Go pin on the 8th February may be disappointed. It looks like there are no plans to issue such a pin. We may have to wait for 750 or 500 days.

Still no date on the re-issue of the London at Night set, but there are prototypes of the new packaging being assessed, so hopefully not much longer.
No news on the London Landmarks set either.

I'm trying to find out if we can expect any new designs in the next month or so. We've had nothing (retail) for a while, so here's hoping there's something soon.

Rumours of a BMW partner pin, possibly in the first quarter of 2010.

Not a lot for now I'm afraid.

3YTG Sold Out

According to a twitter feed on the London 2012 website today, all 3000 3YTG pins have sold out. Certainly Runners Need sold out after about 2 days but at the time of writing the Museum of London shop still show the pin as available.

There's also a news item on the Museum of London website homepage about the launch of the pins last week.

LOCOG Pins in 2007?

As you know I've emailed London 2012 a few times via their website asking for information. Over the last 2 days, I have had replies to my emails (looks like they got bunched up and answered by different people over the course of 2 days).

Anyway, the replies give the standard response that an online store will be open soon and that pins are available from Crest of London and Runners Needs.

BUT...

2 of the replies mention something along the lines of... ' the pins were made for staff only and to mark the brand launch on 4 June 2007'

Now I thought the first logo pins (in fact any non-bid pins) were not available until the Handover Party last August. So if that's the case, what are the pins made for LOCOG staff back in 2007?

Am I wrong? Were pins available before August 2008? Have I missed something?

What do you think?

Pin 6 Confirmed

I can confirm that the suggestion that pin 6 and the white logo pin are the same is true. A member of LOCOG has confirmed that the pin exists and is number 6 but - and here's the best news - whilst it is not on sale now, it may be on retail sale sometime between now and 2012.

Obviously things can change, but for now it looks like it may be available one day.

Range of Gold Pins?

So what could that line of gold in the bottom half of the frame be?

I was wondering about this, until I saw a new pin on eBay today. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to show the image from eBay, so I won't post a picture. Suffice to say it's gold in the shape of Big Ben with a large and bright 2012 Paralympic logo. No other colours.

I 'think' I can see such a shape in the line of gold somewhere in line between pins 1 and 2 in the top row. I think I can see a Buckingham Palace and St Paul's too, but I may have just had too much sugar today!

What do you think - do we have a range of London Skyline pins out there?

Is this pin number 6?

One sharp eyed reader spotted a photograph on the Honav website. In it, Jack Chen (CEO of Honav) is presenting a frame of pins to Jacques Rogge. The first 5 pins in the frame look to be pins 1 to 5 (the 4 coloured logo pins and the Paralympics pin). The 6th pin however - could it be the mysterious white pin. Given it's position in the frame, is it pin 6?

(Click on the image to enlarge)

This appears to be photographic confirmation that pin 6 is the white pin and it's for IOC members only.

Any thoughts?

As for the bottom half of the frame and that line of gold - read on?

Three Years To Go Pins

Now that we're only a month (and a few days) from the 3 YTG mark, what do you think will be the sources of 3YTG pins?

Has anyone heard of any events around them where a pin might be found. The London 2012 website talks about the 'Open Weekend', but has anyone heard any definite details?

Mini Logo Pin

I've had a rumour of a mini-sized logo pin. Seems like it was only available to LOCOG staff. Anyone got any information to share?

Pin Number 6 - Where Are You?

You may have spotted that in the line up of Commemorative Pins issued by LOCOG, pin number 6 is missing. As far as I'm aware, no-one has actually seen a pin with the number 6 stamped on the back, but a potential candidate has been mentioned by more than one source now.

We've all seen the 4 colour pins of the 2012 logo (pins number 1-4), but I've had two reports of a white logo pin. It could be pin number 6, it would fit into the sequence as it follows the four colour pins and the Paralympic logo pin.

Apparently this white pin is only available to certain LOCOG staff.