These were my 13th Olympics and I have it pretty well set up now. I usually bring about 10,000 pins with me when I go to the Olympics. I bought 750,000 in early 2000 for about $.03 each. my partners and I broke them into small groups of about 8,000 and sold them to other collectors for $1000 a lot. you want more pins, you get a lower price (one guy bought 55,000 for $6000). Once we sold $30,000 worth, we split up the remaining pins (which were the best of the lot), and went home with about 100,000 each. Anyhow, I still have enough for 4 or 5 Olympics in my garage... Anyhow, I trade these pins with Athletes, media people, VIPS of the sponsors and suppliers, coaches, volunteers who get them, and other spectators. Most of them get a bag of pins when they get to the games. For example, if you were an invited guest of NBC, you spent several million dollars on Advertising on the network, and they take you along and give you and your guest a bag of about 40 pins of 10 different designs. You are sitting there with 10 of this and 2 of that (time 2), I trade with you, and now you have a couple cool older pins, and 9 of this and 1 of that. Great all around deal. I take those and ebay them. During the games (with all of the free advertising thanks to NBC), they go for $10 to $350 each (yep, I had several that cost me 1 or 2 pins go for over $300). My goal is to pay my way (and my guests, this time just my son), pay my helpers (someone to list the pins on ebay, and a shipping company to ship them out), and cover my lost salary. Anything beyond that is gravy (looks like there will be some gravy this year, even with this being the most expensive games of my life). Right now it is looking like I have several hundred pins left (prices drop after the games as people stop watching the games and stop wanting the pins and as more people come home and find the time to list more and more pins themselves), I should be able to milk them for another $5000 to $10,000.
My son and I were able to go to several events (without a ticket you are unable to get into the Olympic Park, where the venues are), so I bought the cheapest tickets for each day of the Olympics except for opening ceremonies. We hit a LOT of curling, women's hockey (USA Women beat the Swiss like they were Neutral!), sky jumping, speed skating, and so on. I have a lot of friends who do the same thing, and they all know I trade pins for tickets, so we were offered $250 tickets to short track speed skating, $200 speed skating, and so on. I did buy closing ceremonies to help a friend out. He had extra tickets and let me pay $300 a month for 6 months. It was worth it. The closing Ceremonies are FAR FAR better than the opening, and I got about $2000 worth of stuff to sell
). It's hard to plan the trip (housing this time was a real issue. I rarely pay more than $50 per person per night, this time I had to double to budget! Anyhow, my son and I had a great time (he is 13, and getting him to spend ANY time with me is great, for him to spend a month with me was beyond that). He is looking forward to Rio (as am I), but he is not sure he wants to miss that much school. My thinking, if he can see how HARD it is to work for money, get some himself, build a bit of entrepreneurial spirit, and street smarts on making a quick buck, the lost time in History is more than worth it (and now, he is really looking forward to going back to school). Anyhow, between this and the standard garage selling, he is thinking about what kind of work he wants to go in to. What kind of business could HE run... PAY THOSE TAXES... WOO HOO!
More to come... I think.
Overall it is a great adventure (without these small adventures, I would hate my life. With them, I really enjoy my work and my time between them, planning, setting up, so on).
