I hope that you have found the information about NOC pins from Sochi helpful. This week, I was asked by an Olympin member to mention this Tokyo 2020 bid pin:

This pin has been offered on eBay likely and is very likely illegitimate. This is a reminder that while the focus of our committee has been on NOC pins, there are all kinds of bogus Olympic memorabilia out there. Here is a media pin from Sochi that was verified by the US Olympic Committee to be unauthorized:

There are certainly counterfeit winner and participation medals as well.

I hope that one of the legacies of our committee will be the website that we’ve set up to display pins and a strategy for authenticating them. While we’ve concentrated on NOC pins, this same framework can be used to handle the other genres of Olympic pins. Each collecting area will have unique challenges. For example, it may be quite straightforward to find a marketing person at each Olympic bid committee who can authenticate a bid pin while the bid is in existence. But after the bid has concluded, this could be more difficult. Likewise, media pins are sometimes produced by the individual reporters covering the Olympics. Is it possible to authenticate them? I don’t know.

What I do know is that all it takes is a couple of volunteers who are passionate about doing something to help to make a real difference. If anyone is interested in taking on some other area of Olympic collecting, please let me know at Illegal_Pin_Comm@comcast.net and I will put you in touch with someone who can help get you started.

Until next time, stay tuned.

Steve