EXCHANGE of pins representative of nations, games mascot and corporate companies is a normal sight at major sporting events like the Olympic Games.

Athletes, officials, volunteers and guests exchange pins of their countries on a daily basis.

There are traders who have display boards of various pins in all colours, designs and patterns and will only trade a pin in exchange for another or two.

Doug Todd of San Diego in the United States of America is one of those traders, a pin collector who began this hobby in the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

His first pin was the “Star in Motion” which was the name for the logo of the 1984 Games.

Todd has not missed one Olympic Games since, with the 2016 Rio Olympics marking his 17th Olympics.

He funds his own trips, stays in low budget hotels, feeds on snacks for lunch and shops for groceries in a supermarket for his dinner.

The father of two did not envision being a pin collector until his involvement as a volunteer at the 1984 Games.

“After Los Angeles, I thought it would stop when the Olympics finished but it didn’t. It even got bigger after the Olympics,” Todd told this newspaper outside the Main Press Centre in Rio de Janeiro yesterday.

“There were huge trading centres and collectors’ shows years after that. So I got started and by the time the next Olympics was held in 1988, I was ready to go to that Olympics.”

Todd had that one pin on his LA Games volunteer uniform, and a few others he had building up to the Games which he had kept in his drawer.

“And when the games came by, I got them out and put them on my uniform and traded them.

“I’ve always been a collector. I was a coin collector growing up. I collected toys since I was a kid. So I’ve just taken this one (pin collection) to the extreme.”

So how many pins have you collected up until now?

“I have no idea! I stopped counting at least 20 years ago!”

“Why do you do it?” this newspaper asked.

“The best part of it is the interaction with people.

“When I was a collector of coins, you’d buy them, they’d have a set value but there’s no real interaction.

“Here, there’s interaction like finding that both people on both sides of the trade value the pin and the stories that go with it, and the interests people have in the games.”

Today, Todd collects only pins of media organisations from around the world.

“When I started, I was collecting every pin from the games ? of all the sponsors, all the pins they made with the mascot, and sports, and the countries and the media.

“But it became so much, especially in Atlanta, there were many designs and I could not collect them all so I started specialising in collecting pins from media organisations ? television, broadcast, press. That became my specialty because it’s a smart and more defined collection.

“So that’s what I kind of liked and I have a display board of them at home.”

His collection of media pins increased significantly in the 90s when he bought a huge collection of media pins from a lady who was living the hobby.

“It was a very very good collection of media pins at that time so that’s when I decided what I’ll have.

“So now I have a good collection of media pins and specialised in that going forward. Collectors who have been doing this for a long time collect either the media pins or the national Olympics pins.”