Olympic badges worth more than pin money

Brad Frank, draped in a vest festooned with Olympic badge pins, is a walking advertisement for a booming underground economy swirling around the Sydney Games.

Frank, a mathematics teacher from Los Angeles, will probably pay for most of his trip to Australia by trading pins in a market in which values can treble or even quadruple within hours.

He did that at Atlanta, when a friend stocked him with pins and took a commission on profits: there was more than enough for both.

"I buy them by the thousands," he says.

"Here I'll trade Atlanta pins for Sydney pins and I'll sell for maybe 20, 30 or 40 times what I paid for them."

Fellow American Gary Stephenson has more modest expectations.

"It would be stretching it a bit to say I'll cover all my expenses," he says.

"I'll probably have to up the ante a bit."

At the Coca-Cola pin trading centre in Darling Harbour, former London public relations executive Peter Pervus, hired by Coke as a mortar-boarded pin professor to run lectures for aspiring collectors, tells of a complete set of pins issued in Nagano, Japan, in 1998.

They cost about $US400 at the time. Two weeks ago they sold for $11,000.

Stunned Australians and New Zealanders - who have seen their national Olympic committee pins soar in value - are only just realising that those dinky badges are big business.

It has to be big for Coke to buy the sole franchise on international Olympic pins in 1988, and to set up its Darling Harbour trading centre six months ahead of the Games.

Internet trading and auctions are flourishing, fed by soaring demand in Asia, Europe and North America.

Mr Pervus estimates that up to 2000 people have come to Sydney exclusively to trade pins. Others, like Mr Frank and Mr Stephenson, will catch a few events as well.

Mr Pervus, who says he trades because he likes to collect pins and its a good way to meet people, walks several hundred people a day through the basics of collecting, its etiquette - you don't push sales and you don't cheat - and tells how to check for frauds.

Pins, he says, have become a passion for millions and he predicts it will challenge other investment-rich hobbies, such as coin and stamp collecting.

Behind him, throughout the day, a constant crush of 200 to 300 people trade at dozens of booths, or buy through the Coke shop.

At 11 am each day since the Games opened, a new pin is released with great ceremony and with celebrities such as Nadia Comaneci, the 1970s child star of gymnastics.

Together the pins will form the shape of a Coke bottle, with the value of the set accelerating as soon as it is completed.

Dan Wheeler, of American television sales channel QVC, broadcasts the release live from Darling Harbour to millions of US homes.

Across the world, websites dedicated to Olympic pins trace history, availability, provenance of prime specimens, and pick the best investments from Sydney.

There are scores to choose from: beribboned Bulgarian pins, tiny working watches, others in the shape of trucks and aeroplanes, a swivelling power pylon, even a Barbie Doll wearing a Sydney 2000 hat and a vest with tiny replica pins.

The picks are the national pins given to athletes and officials, pins produced by sponsors and media organisations, security pins and others given to volunteers.

Let the trading begin.