Olympic Media Pins
Shop by year: 1984 Sarajevo
Journalists and broadcasters were among the most active pin traders at the Olympics. At the 1984 Los Angeles Games, the organizing committee's press office issued what its official report calls the first pins ever made for the media. They showed Sam the Eagle as a newspaper reporter, a radio and TV broadcaster and a photographer, and gave the press a starter pin to begin trading. Roughly 2,800 journalists, 567 photographers and 357 technicians were accredited. They worked out of the Main Press Center at the Los Angeles Convention Center and, for television, ABC's broadcast center at Sunset-Gower Studios in Hollywood.
News organizations soon made their own. ABC, the host broadcaster, issued pins for both the Los Angeles and Sarajevo Games, and its pins were among the most sought-after in Los Angeles. Media pins were usually handed out only inside press areas and in small numbers, which is why collectors treat them as their own category. They are scarcer than sponsor pins that were sold to the public.
Different departments of a network or newspaper also had pins made to use as traders, which is why the same organization can have many different designs.
