MILAN — You don't have to be an athlete to leave the Olympics with a coveted piece of metal, as long as you're game to trade lapel pins.
The pins come in all shapes and sizes, usually made of enamel and secured on a lanyard, vest, scarf or beanie with a butterfly clasp in the back. They represent all sorts of different countries, sports, companies, creatures and cultures, often in innovative combinations — like Team USA's pizza slice on skis or the Olympic mascot perched on a mozzarella ball.
In these and recent Olympics, athletes have gone viral for amassing pins in the village with varying frenzy. But many others involved — from spectators to journalists to security guards — spend the two-and-a-half weeks working on their collections, too.
And a subset of big-time traders travel far and wide every two or four years just to get in on the action, usually standing outside a venue with a board, blanket or scarf studded with rows of shiny, colorful pins.
In fact, the tradition has become so big that this year's Games featured a designated gathering place to partake in it: The Official Olympic Pin Trading Center, a Warner Bros.-sponsored, Looney-Tunes-branded pin mecca smack-dab in central Milan.
On a sunny Sunday morning, the line to get into the pin trading center stretched down the sidewalk. Just outside, a couple of seasoned collectors laid their shimmering goods out on a bench for passersby to admire and approach.
Jonathan Jimenez, part of a group of students from Pepperdine University, briefly stepped out of line to check out the scene. His lanyard had no nametag, but plenty of pins — including one from his school, an Italian flag and a hot dog.
"I just started my collection this week," he said excitedly. "It's my first Olympics, and it seems like when you share that passion, people want to take you in with open arms."
Jimenez admits he's trying to shed some of his introvertedness, and says pin trading has already helped.
"I went to a Switzerland-Finland [women's] hockey game last night, and I probably talked to 20 people," he said. "You just look at them, you point at your necklace and look at theirs, like, 'I really like your pins, you want to trade?' And then boom, next thing you know, you're having a conversation for 20 minutes, and it's awesome."
There are a few ground rules for pin trading, which I learned while reporting this story: Don't visibly wear pins you're not willing to part with, prepare to trade a pin for an interview and always seal the deal with a handshake.
The tradition has exploded in recent decades
Once you enter the pin trading center — as more than 30,000 people have, according to Warner Bros. — you walk past a kids' rock climbing wall and Bugs Bunny photo op to get to the trading area. There, you're greeted by about a dozen high-top tables, each covered with the personal collection of a particular trader (or at least the part they're willing to part with).
The traders hail from 18 different countries across three continents, according to Scott Reed, who runs the trading floor. Each gets a three-hour shift, with many rotating through more than once.
There's also a wall of licensed pins for sale, some at 15 euros apiece. The official center also sells a sought-after exclusive pin of the day, but people can buy only two: one to keep and one to trade. That's the only time you'll see anyone reach for cash inside the trading center.
"You don't buy pins from traders. You buy a pin, and then you trade," said Marcelo Flores, who works for HONAV USA, which designs the pins for Italy and Team USA. I met him by happenstance after he finished making a trade at my table.
Flores traces the origins of pin trading to the second modern Olympics, in Paris in 1900. He says that at the first one, in Athens in 1896, Greek athletes showed up wearing cloth pins to signify that they were already champions in their own country; other nations took note and brought some with them next time.
Olympic historian Bill Mallon confirms that pins have been around at the Olympics "for a long time in various guises." For example, International Olympic Committee members would receive them at meetings dating back to at least the 1920s.
He says the phenomenon of pin trading as we know it today started in the 1980s.
The first official pin trading center — sponsored by Coca-Cola — debuted at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, though they're not necessarily part of every Olympics. Mallon recalls that in Atlanta in 1996, the city allowed some 50 different traders to set up booths in public, calling it "kind of a carnival show."
"There have always been some pins around the Olympic Games … just a simple little thing for people to have an interest in the Olympics," Mallon says. "It's huge now … there's pin collectors clubs, a world collector's fair … I mean, yeah, it's kind of gotten crazy."
Daniel Bakker, one of the collectors perched outside the Milan pin trading center, says he got started in 1980 in Lake Placid.
"I [was selling] all kinds of souvenirs, and I had pins … but people from other countries would come up and want to trade," said Bakker, who flew in from Dallas. "And then they started wanting to buy my pins that I was wearing, instead of the pins I was selling, so I figured there was kind of an angle there."
This is Bakker's 20th Olympics. When asked if he plans to continue in 2028, he replied: "If I'm alive."
What makes a good trade
There are definitely some extra high-demand pins at every Olympics, like the ones Snoop Dogg hands out of himself, or some of the official pins of the day. But in general, trading is all about personal preference.
"One person's trash pin is another person's treasure pin," said Molly Schmidt of Milwaukee, wearing bunny ears during her volunteer shift at the trading center. She had just given away a 2006 Torino pin to a delighted attendee of those Games who was looking specifically for one.
This is Schmidt's second Olympics, and she's not yet 30. But her history with the subculture runs deep: Her late dad and his best friend, whom she calls her uncle, first met as pin traders in Atlanta in 1996.
Schmidt's dad took each of her three older brothers to the Olympics, but died a year before he could take her to Rio. She was studying abroad in Madrid in 2024 when her uncle invited her to join him in Paris. He made her a special set of pins to trade, which she is still giving out to people in Milan. They say "like father, like daughter" and feature the flags of the eight Olympic host countries her dad attended, and the Eiffel Tower, representing her first.
"The Olympics always brought him so much joy," Schmidt said. "I do feel really close to him through doing this, and I've gotten closer with my uncle as well."
She's made plenty of cool connections — and even some friendships — through pin trading.
Schmidt traded pins with some U.S. figure skaters just outside the Duomo, which she says helped her see them as human beings instead of just Olympians. And she's still in touch with a German rower she met in Paris, even planning to send her Germany's pin from these Olympics.
Pin trading can be a transaction. Or it can be a lifestyle.
Janet Grissom, who was manning one of the trading tables, is a Veterans Affairs psychiatrist from Salt Lake City who got into the pin game, almost begrudgingly, while volunteering at her hometown Olympics in 2002.
"I [intentionally] didn't get into the pin trading because I thought I might get in over my head and get too obsessed with it," Grissom said. "But then when I was in doping control, there were athletes that were wanting to trade pins with me. And I said, 'Oh, this is silly, I should trade pins.' Well, here I am, 11 Olympics later, still trading pins."
Grissom banks her time off as a federal employee, and usually sells her more valuable pins on eBay to fund her Olympic travel (she says she has broken even in the past). She keeps the rest on pin boards at home. What keeps her coming, all these years later?
"It's really fun talking with people and meeting people. The pins are really pretty. They sort of have a language all of their own," she said. "It doesn't matter what language you speak, you can do a pin trade."
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