I started my Olympic pin collection by trading my very first and only pin:

This was the Team 84 pin given to every person employed by the LAOOC at the time. I then walked across the street while stationed at the UCLA Olympic Village, and asked one of the bank tellers if she would trade one of their corporate Olympic pins for my one and only pin. Instead of trading for it, she gave it to me. I now had my first sponsor pin to add to my two-pin collection: First Interstate Bank.

My husband, who was my college sweetheart back then, worked for Fuji Film...

...as a motorcycle courier running film back and forth during the Olympics. This meant I had access to Fuji Film sponsor pins. As I met more media personnel in the course of arranging transportation for them, I obtained some really interesting pins such as these:

Radio Free Europe

The Associated Press

The problem was, I didn't want to trade any of these pins. Yet I needed two of something to really start trading and grow my collection. And it had to be something I would like too, to make the trade more interesting. So I bought these pins in local gift shops before they became "hot" traders:

This is a Sam Series 1 Volleyball pose without a reinforcement between the hat and the ball. Later versions of this pin included such a reinforcement to prevent breakage.

Well, the rest is history. I've been collecting Olympic pins for over 12 years now, not to mention my military pin collection during my days as an Army Senior Train Commander during the Occupation of Berlin. That's another pin collecting story:

"How I obtained a box full of historic military insignia without really trying...."