KEY POINTS:
For 23 months out of every 24, Timm Jamieson is an architect in Roanoke, Virginia.
Then he packs up his collection of pins and parks himself at the Olympics for three weeks.
Beijing is his ninth Games - winter and summer - and business was brisk outside the main press centre in the heart of Olympic HQ yesterday for about half a dozen operators.
The pin fanatics who assemble at every Games are hardy souls. Jamieson knows it's nonsense to non-pin fanciers, but he doesn't care.
To him, it's a hobby, it's fun, and you meet interesting fellow pinheads.
On this day, about 2000 pins are laid out. The collectors squat on upturned buckets or small stools as customers spend ages peering intently at the little bits of coloured tin and plastic.
Everything is swapped; no money changes hands.
"The police don't want us selling," Jamieson said.
And with a large camera positioned directly above, any surreptitious hand movement towards the wallet would probably result in the collectors experiencing the Chinese equivalent of having their collars felt by the constabulary.
Trading has been steady to good in Beijing, Jamieson believes, because "it's more part of the culture here".
"Some people call us the 28th venue of the Olympics."
Nothing he's seen has topped the Nagano Winter Olympics of 1998.
The worst? Sydney 2000.
"All they wanted to do was eat waffles and drink beer."
The Japanese evidently lap up this stuff. Jamieson rates the Asahi TV Corporation pin, featuring a blue cat, as the hot item.
Not far behind is the CCTV emblem featuring the Olympic flame, and anything with a panda or dragon is snapped up.
But if you are into pins, there'll be something to your liking in Beijing, - guitars, television networks, the ageless Hard Rock Cafe, MPC Volunteer, Coca Cola and piles from various previous Games.
Jamieson shifted about 280 items in a day at the weekend. That's good business, he said.
And he is sunnily unfazed by those who reckon the collections are just tacky junk.
"It's a passion. We're spreading goodwill and having fun."
You'd need to, sitting and frying for hours each day.
As fellow trader Janet Grissom, a psychiatrist from Salt Lake City, put it: "I'll never be an Olympic swimmer, but I can trade."
- David Leggat
Top: Bevan Docherty might have ended up with the bronze rather than the gold he was looking likely to get ... but he's delighted anyway. Photo / Kenny Rodger
