FEATURE: "Pinheads" bring their colourful trade to London By Anna Tomforde and Britta Guerke, dpa

London (dpa) - Pin trading, the number one spectator sport of the Olympic Games, is fast attracting new addicts in and around the Olympic Park in London.

"I had no idea about pins before, but now it‘s become my way of joining in the Games," said Terry Baker, a shop worker in the Park.

"You talk about them, and it brings everyone together in the Olympic spirit," said Terry, who had "traded a few" but was keeping most of the collected items for keepsakes.

The one donated by a Brazilian athlete was his favourite.

Just outside the park, and at nearby railway stations, veteran pin hunters and traders - known as pinheads - have set up stall, their lapels, waistcoats and hats covered in the emblems.

In 1995, when his ex-wife threw out all his pins when their marriage broke down, he was heartbroken, recalls Canadian Andrew Kollo. But, after recovering from the shock, he resumed his passion, and is now the proud holder of around 7,000 pins.

"It‘s the thrill of the hunt," admits Kollo, who was just 10 years old when he was given his first pin by an athlete at the 1972 Munich Olympics. "I came home with 40 pins," he recalls.

But his favourite, he reveals, was a pin given to him by Prince Albert of Monaco at the Lillehammer Winter Games in 1994.

"It‘s trying to get what you don‘t have, but it‘s also about meeting new people," he says.

But his haul is nothing compared to that of Dan Bakker, from the US, who calls 20,000 pins his own. "It‘s always a talking point, even if you don‘t speak the same language, you can still trade," he enthuses.

Both men hope to increase - and improve - their haul in London.

The popularity of pin trading is generally contributed to its reflection of the spirit of the Olympic Games, involving competition, sharing and friendship.

Pin trading was first introduced during the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, but the tradition goes back much further.

The first Olympic "pins" - which were actually cardboard discs - were designed as colourful badges to identify athletes, officials and the media at the first modern Olympic Games in Athens 1896.

Some Olympians that summer exchanged their pins as gestures of friendship and good will - and started a tradition.

A milestone was reached at the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, when the first souvenir and official Olympic pins were produced for sale to spectators.

But Olympic pin trading began in earnest at the Paris 1924 Olympic Games, where the existence of the first Olympic Village enabled athletes and officials to exchange the items easily.

More than 1 million souvenir pins were sold to the public between 1933 and 1936, to help underwrite the 1936 Olympic Winter Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, and the Olympic Games that same year in Berlin, which remain among the most sought-after items until today.

"Years later, every prized pin still has a story to tell," said a leading sponsor for Olympic pin trading. dpa aet gue bwh