In Beijing, Collectors Go for Gold, Not Green

Not everyone in Beijing right now is there to marvel at Michael Phelps. As MSNBC reported the other day, a healthy nonprofit enterprise has sprung up at the Games, with a plethora of Olympic pin collectors set up outside the Beijing Exhibition Center to obtain as many pins as they can through “barter, exchange and trade.” One Canadian collector, who claims to have 40,000 to 50,000 pins in his portfolio, noted that he wasn’t in it for the money:

“I could sell [pins] for a couple hundred bucks,” he said. “But I spent thousands to come here. That’s not what it’s about.”

Sounds like a pretty mission-oriented activity to me. | 501(c)