Getting Stuck : Counterfeit Olympic Pins Hit the Market as Trading Fever Persists

Three months ago, Marlene Steiner went to a swap meet and traded 10 moderately priced Olympic pins for a pin ostensibly worth $75. Two days later, she discovered that the souvenir was a counterfeit.

Steiner, who buys, sells and trades pins for a living, is now far more careful when she goes to swap meets. She takes originals along for comparison to avoid getting stuck with another counterfeit.

Nearly a year after the Olympic flame was extinguished at the Coliseum, pin fever is still alive in Southern California. Their numbers are smaller than they were during the Olympics but traders, buyers and sellers still gather at shopping centers and swap meets and meet through classified advertisements to bargain over the brightly colored laminated souvenirs of the 1984 Games.

Of late, however, the market has been confused by counterfeits, and all but the most knowledgeable collectors can find themselves victimized.

The fakes began appearing late last summer when collectors and manufacturers scrambled to make as much money as possible from the burgeoning pin market in the wake of the Games. Michael L. Painter, attorney for Ooh La La Inc., the official manufacturer of Olympic pins, estimated that profits from sales of counterfeits are “in the millions of dollars in this city alone.”

“The public was buying them at prices that were significant and getting nothing,” he said.

For example, the original version of a “Sam the Eagle” pin bearing the inscription “volunteer” had a market value of $350, according to Walter Zink, a partner with Steiner at DLM pin designers in Northridge. But post-Olympic counterfeits of the same pin, he said, range in value from $5 to $20.

Counterfeiters usually copy pins that were originally produced in very limited quantities, since those are the ones considered most valuable by collectors. For example, the 400 existing pins that feature Sam the Eagle holding a bottle of Coca Cola sell for about $1,200 each, but counterfeits of the same pin cost as little as $1.

The Coca Cola pin is one of a number of designs eliminated when the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee ordered an end to production of all Sam the Eagle pins featuring a corporate product or logo. To date, Steiner has collected 31 counterfeit versions of that pin.

Concerned about infringements of its copyrights, the Organizing Committee has begun an investigation into counterfeit pin production and sales, said Carol Daniels, general counsel for the committee.

Ooh La La has filed lawsuits against three distributors that it accuses of selling counterfeits and has received agreements from a dozen other companies saying they will not manufacture or sell copied pins.

“It was a matter of sending a signal,” attorney Painter said of the lawsuits. “It has cost them (Ooh La La) much more than they’ve gotten back in damages.”

Despite the influx of counterfeits, collectors continue to frequent local swap meets and pin shows hoping to find the all-important pin to enhance their collection.

“The Olympics awoke a lot of people (to the fact) that pins exist,” collector Zink said. “All of a sudden, pin collecting has become a very hot phenomenon. It has become the fastest growing hobby in the United States.”

And, like most hobbies, pin trading has become dominated by a group of dedicated aficionados.

The most popular local pin shows are on Tuesday evenings at the Pasadena Convention Center and every other Monday at the Anaheim Bowl. Collectors can also visit Brookside Park near the Pasadena Rose Bowl every second Sunday of the month, and a fourth show takes place on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays in Los Angeles’ Chinatown.

The meticulous care that traders take in selecting their pins is not unlike the effort devoted to more traditional pursuits such as coin and stamp collecting, Zink said.

“They look at pins as valuable, just as they do their coins and stamps,” he said.

Steiner said the fledgling hobby is gaining respect as more and more people from all walks of life convert. She said an increasing number of attorneys, judges and doctors have taken an interest in pin trading, and that has lent the hobby some of the respect that it initially lacked.

For example, one of DLM’s customers is a dentist who trades pins with his patients, Steiner said.

But Maureen Matteson, a spokeswoman for Ooh La La, said the company never intended for the pins to be viewed as collectors’ items.

Not Fine Jewelry

“You have to remember that the sponsors paid under $1 for (each pin),” she said. “You cannot look at it as fine jewelry or something (like stamps and coins) that can be controlled. If we had any idea that they (collectors) were going to be as scrutinizing as they are, probably we would have been a little bit more careful.”

Regardless of Ooh La La’s intentions, the company’s Olympic pins gave impetus to a hobby that was relatively unknown in Southern California before the 1984 Games. Today, Olympic pins are only a part of a growing market that has come to include official and unofficial pins for a variety of occasions, from sporting events such as the 1985 Super Bowl to the President’s inauguration.

There is even a pin featuring an armored vehicle and the inscription “Rock Houses Beware,” a reference to the Los Angeles Police Department’s armored assaults on fortified cocaine distribution centers. Collectors have also started trading pins promoting the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, Korea.

And a local group has come out with a pin promoting its efforts to bring the Olympics back to Los Angeles in 2004.

“(Pin trading) will be here for the next 20 to 30 years,” predicted collector Donald Norwood, 27. “It’ll probably be here until the next (Los Angeles) Olympics in 2004.”

SPOTTING THE FAKES

Detection of counterfeit pins can be a difficult task, but careful collectors can spot a fake by looking for several features, including:

Low price. Most fakes sell for less than $10.

Color tones are different from the originals. Colors on fakes are often not as bright, and sometimes the colors are completely different.

Sizes are sometimes larger than the originals, since fakes are frequently molded on top of the genuine pins.

Copyright symbols on backs of copied pins are worded differently. Originals of the Stars in Motion pins have the inscription: “1980 L.A. OLY COM.” Original Sam the Eagle pins have the same information, but some say “1981 L.A. OLY COM.”

Sometimes, copyright symbols on fakes are clearer and easier to read than on the originals.