COUNTYWIDE : Going for Olympic Gold in Pin Trading

Joyce Griffith and her friends in the Balboa Ski Club are off to Lillehammer, Norway, for the Winter Olympic Games, which begin today.

The only competition they will participate in, though, is the pin-trading event.

“We have all kinds of Olympic paraphernalia, we’ll be carrying around American flags and paint our faces red, white, and blue,” said Griffith, a Huntington Beach resident. “We do all the silly stuff.”

They are part of a 13-person group from the Newport Beach-based Balboa Ski Club leaving for Norway for the second week of the games and the closing ceremonies on Feb. 27.

Many in the group attended the games in Albertville, France two years ago and Calgary six years ago and have evolved into Winter Olympics die-hards.

“We booked (this trip) two years ago,” Griffith said Friday in an interview in her house, where she wore an Olympic jacket with the colors of the American flag.

She went to Lillehammer last year to scout for the best accommodations.

She is proud to have landed some of the hottest tickets available and lodging in Lillehammer for $600 per night.

She, her husband, Larry, and the others will see the women’s figure-skating event featuring Nancy Kerrigan and, maybe, Tonya Harding, the hockey competition and the closing ceremonies.

But the real reason they are going is to trade pins.

Griffith is embarrassed to say that she plans to take a full suitcase packed with about 1,000 Olympic pins produced in the United States.

She hopes to add a wide assortment of international pins to her collection, which includes a Jamaican Bobsled pin from 1992 and a Thailand Olympic team pin from 1984.

Her best items are kept in albums with pin cushions for pages.

“They call it ‘pin fever.’ It gets to be an addiction,” she said, adding that collectors will gather under large circus-like tents at the games to trade pins produced by various countries and their corporate sponsors.

As she did at the previous two Olympic Games, Griffith will attend events wearing dozens of pins on her neck scarf. This acts as a beacon to other traders.

“They will come up to you and look at your pins,” she said. Because of the mix of people and language barriers, many pin transactions are silent and quick.

“Everybody understands the language of pins,” said Griffith’s friend, Sandy Olinyk, who is also going to Norway.

“There is really nothing like this,” Griffith said. “I am not much into sports, but I really get into this.”

When she returns from the Olympics, she will begin planning a 1996 trip to Atlanta for the summer games.