Error Pins

Life's not always perfect, and so it is with Olympic pins. This, of course, adds another wrinkle to collecting--even more pins to acquire! Below, from a 13-pin Russian made set for the 1992 Albertville Olympics, are two Russian hockey pins. The set of pins to which these belong include one pin for each of the 12 teams that participated in the 1992 tournament, and a 13th "Albertville '92 Hockey" pin, which also bears the Albertville Olympic flame symbol. The pin on the left, below, was made without the famous Hammer & Sickle from the Soviet flag, and the "CCCP" lettering is unclear. The manufacturer got it right the second time around to include the Hammer & Sickle and the proper CCCP--the second pin is a much nicer item. More unwitting flag issues are found in the following pins manufactured for Coca-Cola in 1994. These are from a 14-pin set (again one pin for each of the 12 participating nations, and two additional Coca-Cola center piece pins). This time, the manufacturer inverted the colors of the German flag, erroneously putting the yellow on top and the black on the bottom. Again, practice makes perfect, which was achieved with the second pin, on the the right, that properly depicts the colors of the German flag.

And not all errors are flag or color based. The pin below, from the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, simply misspelled the word "hockey". Thus, the manufacturer created a unique "Ice Hocke" pin. Regardless, they all look good in a collection.