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By Tyler Bednar
Cronkite News

PARIS – From Snoop Dogg blowing Olympic-looking smoke rings to a heart with gymnast Simone Biles’ name in it, the pins of the Paris Games are still creating a buzz even weeks after the competitions ended.

Pin trading at the Olympics is popular for athletes and spectators. Some fans travel across the world specifically to collect and trade them.

The tradition can be traced to the first modern Games in 1896, when the pins were used to identify athletes, officials and media members. In the Athens Olympics, only 241 athletes – compared to the more than 10,000 in Paris – competed for 14 teams in 43 events.

While the Olympics has greatly changed over time, the art of pin trading has endured.

Although no one has participated in every Olympic trading event, one of the fans in Paris, Andrew Kollo, has been collecting pins since the 1972 Games in Munich.

“I had a family member that was competing at those games, and I got into the (Olympic) Village and started getting pins, and after that I was hooked,” Kollo said.

Kollo’s involvement in past Olympic Games has delivered lifelong friendships. He was volunteering for Team Canada at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games when he let in a man named Mark Chestnut into the Team Canada house.

Twenty-two years later, they’re still friends and at the Paris Games together, collecting and trading pins with fans all over the world.

The two have collected over 10,000 pins combined. While the experience has turned into a lifelong friendship, not everyone involved in trading sees eye-to-eye.

“Pin collecting causes a lot of problems with families,” Chestnut said. “You have to find a spouse that’s supportive of your hobby. Mine has learned to live with it, however, everything stays in the basement. I only have three pieces of memorabilia above ground.”

The Olympics draw many of the world’s top athletes and celebrities. Michael Phelps, who won 23 gold medals, remains a constant voice in swimming even after his Olympics career finished at the 2016 Rio Games. Former NFL quarterback Tom Brady made the trip to Paris with his daughter and received constant media attention.

But few were as popular as legendary rapper Snoop Dogg. The artist has been on a media tear this summer, and even appeared on the Milwaukee Brewers’ broadcast doing play-by-play commentary, which went viral.

His custom pin was one of the most coveted in Paris. It showed him with his head back blowing smoke that resembled the Olympic rings, the Eiffel Tower serving as a backdrop.

Ron Gould, a corporate photographer based out of Chicago, has collected Olympic trading pins since 1972.

His permanent collection contains 600-plus pins – and he specializes in trading for specific types.

“I will only trade for stuff that I need, and what I specialize in are media pins – the pins from radio, TV stations that are there that have their own pins – and police,” Gould said. “The police sometimes have their own pins, and I’ve traded heavy to get some of those pins, because the officers are sometimes only issued one or two and are very hesitant to give them up.”

Gould joined a plethora of people who traded pins in Paris. He even reserved a booth at Parc de la Villette – the Paris Olympics’ official site for pin trading – for two days during the last week of the Olympics. The park is where all the die-hard pin traders go to meet new people and meet new pins.

Every pin trader is unique in their way of trading – what specific pins they prefer to collect, how many pins they have and how long they’ve been collecting Olympic pins. Chestnut, like most Olympic pin traders, uses the hobby as a way to make connections with people from all over the world.

“It is really all about the trading, the meeting of the people, the interaction,” Chestnut said. “How do you communicate with someone whose language you don’t speak? It’s through pins. Seeing a smile on a little child’s face, because he doesn’t have pins to trade just by giving him a pin that I have extras of. It’s just so enjoyable.

“I’ve seen people three or four times since I’ve been here, and they’re waving and tracking me down just because I’ve given them pins before in the past. It’s just amazing.”

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