The Pacific Pin Club

It is with regret that we announce the passing of our friend and fellow Pacific Pin Club member, Dan Pederson, after a lengthy and courageous battle with pancreatic cancer. Dan was predeceased by his father Lawrence (Swede) Pederson. He is survived by his mother, Patricia Pederson, and many close friends.

Dan was a long-time employee of the Abbotsford School District. He taught at Maple Grove Elementary School, Harry Sayers Elementary School and Eugene Reimer Middle School, where he was a positive influence and touched many young lives. He also volunteered many hours coaching and tutoring.

Dan’s likes included sports, fitness, music and collecting “pins”. He could always be counted on to help out his friends and family. He particularly enjoyed family dinners.

A memorial service will be held at the Trinity Memorial United Church at 33737 George Ferguson Way on Saturday, October 18th at 2:00 pm.

In lieu of flowers, we invite and encourage all Pacific Pin Club members and pin trading friends of Dan to make a donation in his name to the Abbotsford SPCA, 34312 Industrial Way, Abbotsford, BC, V2S 7M6, Canada.

Pictured at the 2009 Olympin Collectors’ Club Show held at the Richmond Olympic Oval (L-R): Al Falco, Angela and Frank Zavarella and Dan Pederson. Dan and Frank were co-presidents of the Pacific Pin Club at the time.

Another month, another pin trading poster. This time it’s for May and a distinctly American theme has been unveiled. Click here to read the entire story.

An interesting look back at pin trading at the Expo 2010 Shanghai China … enjoy!

A powerful practice has swept across the expansive reaches of the Expo, consuming all who is exposed to it. Pin trading is the name, and all have fallen. What is being worshipped? Little pieces of metal, coming in a range of all shapes and sizes, beauty and grossness. Who are the followers? The armies of expo workers, from pavilion staff to volunteers, all shamelessly indulging in pin sharing debauchery.

Glory comes in the form of that shiny row of pins hung around your neck. They are medals of your negotiating prowess and investment choices. They represent sweat, blood and an unholy amount of saliva (pin-trading is thirsty business). Caught around the Expo site without any pins? Well, good luck receiving easy access into pavilions, making intra-pavilion friends, finding volunteers to do your job for you or getting anything you want done at the Expo.

Click here to enjoy the entire article.

Many call pin trading the 21st sport at the Arctic Winter Games, and some say it’s highly addictive.

“Once I realized what it was and got into it, then I really got deep into it,” said Gina Kalloch, a pin-trading veteran with 18 years experience.

“I started designing pins myself and so I have pins that are really one-of-a-kind, limited editions to trade. And things really went crazy from there. Now people look for me when they come to the Arctic Winter Games.”

It seems simple enough: bring your own pins to the games and start trading with people from around the circumpolar world. But there’s strategy, just like in any other sport, and that comes with experience.

“As a beginner, I guess you’d sometimes break up sets,” said Andrew Noble of Team Alaska. “But as an experienced person, you’d just trade set for set.”

Don Bigsby is in Sochi for the 2014 Winter Olympics. Bob Boehm isn’t there, a last-minute scratch. For both men, though, the Games mean more than athletic feats to cheer and medal counts to track. Their arrival means a new batch of Olympic pins are in circulation, a biennial bonanza to hobbyists like Bigsby and Boehm, whose personal pin collections run well into the thousands.

“It gets to be a real frenzy, the number of people trading pins” at an Olympic site, said Bigsby, 73, a retired telephone company engineer from upstate New York, as he prepared to leave for Russia. Bigsby cofounded Olympin, a collectors’ club with 550 members in 32 countries, and expects to spend much of his time in Sochi in pursuit of Olympic loot.

Boehm, a retired Lowell schoolteacher, had planned to be in Russia, too. A veteran of 13 Olympics, he canceled his trip in mid-January due to a family issue. However, he’s already scooped up a fistful of Sochi pins handed out at a traveling Olympics exhibit in Boston, adding to the 5,000 pins he already owns.

Please click here to enjoy Bob’s entire story.