Stratford already has a world-class stadium, a velodrome and the biggest McDonald's on the planet, and now, it seems, the E20 postcode has its very own currency. But sadly for Visa — the bank preventing sports fans visiting the park from withdrawing cash with anything but its own branded credit cards — this currency isn’t of the paper variety. Instead, it is small and sharp. This summer, you see, it is all about having pins in your pocket.
Dubbed the unofficial spectator sport, the tradition of pin trading is one that goes hand in hand with the Olympics and in fact is thought to date back to 1896 when the athletes and officials competing in Athens wore coloured discs in order to identify themselves. Now considered to be a marker of friendship and gratitude, athletes present them to fans, friends and passers-by during the two-week period in which they go for gold. The pins have become a coveted piece of Olympic memorabilia.
Aided by a host of major companies — Coca-Cola began manufacturing pins in 1988, while the likes of NBC, Eurostar and BT also create the badges ahead of most Olympic occasions — the range of pins on offer is now wider than ever. It’s little surprise that the most avid collectors are happy to pay extortionate sums for the most exclusive pins.
A host of Big Ben badges created by Coca-Cola as part of its London Landmarks collection for London 2012 are already available on eBay with bids for some passing the £50 mark. Similarly, a badge designed to commemorate the Games by travel company Eurostar is available for £40. Keen to cater to the pin-mad public, many of whom have travelled from as far as Canada and China in order to possess their own little metal piece of London history, a number of exchange-only pin trading shops have popped up at venues in Stratford and Hyde Park.
The pin traders have already seen thousands of visitors through their doors since the Games began, and they are expecting others to follow as more badges enter circulation. When Barcelona played host to the Olympics in 1992, some 500,000 pin collectors visited the pin-trading sites, while at Atlanta in 1996 the stalls enjoyed 1.5 million fans. Keen to cash in on the sporting fever grippling the capital, Coca-Cola issued almost 200 limited edition badge styles ahead of the Games and continues to unveil more on a daily basis.
Today’s must-have is a Wimbledon-inspired strawberry pin to commemorate the tennis final yesterday, while last week we saw a bright yellow swimming pin enter the badge mayhem. Pins — truly the hottest tickets in town.
