Olympic Pin Collecting . . . A Beginning

In the early 1990's, as I worked my way through college in Salt Lake City as a valet parking attendant, a patron who happened to be a member of the Salt Lake Olympic Bid Committee gave me an Olympic pin--it was my first. The pin, pictured here, was one of Salt Lake City's bid pins for the 1998 Winter Olympic Games. Though the 1998 games were ultimately awarded to Nagano, this simple gift ignited my interest in Olympic pins. As I got more and more into collecting, I found out that there were literally tens of thousands of pins out there. Thereafter, I soon realized that I would have to focus on a particular type of pin in order to place some sort of limitation on the number of pins I "needed" for my collection. Because I have always been a hockey fan, limiting my pin quest to Olympic hockey pins seemed like a good choice. Now, what I consider to be an Olympic hockey pin is difficult to define. National Olympic Committee pins, venue pins, mascot pins, media pins, generic pins, corporate sponsor pins, "unofficial" pins and many others often make their way into my collection. Basically, if it has a hockey player on it, or has something to do with Olympic hockey, then it is collection worthy--perhaps I didn't do such a good job limiting the number of pins in my ever growing collection after all.