Over the past ten years, NOCs have come to understand that they can generate significant revenue through the sale of their pins. How they achieve that revenue varies greatly. Many NOCs will send collectors pins in exchange for small donations. Some NOCs have taken this to the next level and set up their own stores to sell pins – see the Japanese Olympic Committee store and the United States Olympic Committee store. Others license the production of their retail pins to one of their sponsors – see the HBC Team Canada store. Still others have pin producers sell their pins on their behalf – see the Kingdom Pins website.

For the last week or so, debate has raged within our committee as to whether these “retail” NOC pins should be considered NOC pins. Some members feel that a pin is only an NOC pin when it is used by the Olympic team and/or its leaders. Others feel that a pin produced by a sponsor is a sponsor pin even if it looks like a NOC pin. Another group believes that an authorized pin that uses the NOC logo is a NOC pin regardless of who produced it.

In truth, no consensus was reached on whether to consider retail pins NOC pins or not. However, consensus was reached that if you have pins in circulation that look like these:

then it is important to let collectors know that these pins are for sale. So, our website will continue to add images of these retail pins as they become available. If any of them are eventually used by their Olympic team, we will let you know that as well. Whether you decide to add these pins to your collection is, as always, up to you.

Until next time, stay tuned.

Steve