1904 Olympic Pin

Last month my wife, Diane, and I had the pleasure of attending the Centennial Olympic Games in Atlanta. I am always amazed as to when and where 1904 World's Fair items show up. I was looking in all the normal places, antique shops, antique malls and garage sales. I certainly did not expect to find anything while we were actually at the Olympics. Being the avid collector that I am, I was caught up in the collecting and trading of Olympic pins. I was searching everywhere for pins, the Coca-Cola pin trading pavilion, the Olympic Super Store at Centennial Olympic Park and at all the event venues we attended. I had a pretty good collection going by the middle of the week. On our second trip to the Olympic Super Store, I spied a wall of pins that had not been there two days before. The pins were produced in honor of the Centennial Olympic Games and were produced in a series of 26, one pin for each location where the Olympics were held. Well I thought I had hit a gold mine, the Olympics were held in St. Louis in 1904! I found Paris, London and Atlanta, no St. Louis. I knew it had to be there, so I kept digging. Then on a lower rack behind four other pins I recognized the cover of the daily program, I found my 1904 World's Fair Olympic Pin. Everyone must have thought I had just won the lottery. I showed the pin to Diane and she agreed I had to get it. The pin itself is no bigger than an inch in height; I have enlarged it so you can see the detail in it. It is cast in metal with enamel baked on. The pin was encased in plastic and included a trading card. The front of the card was the cover of the daily program, as shown above, on the reverse side of the trading card the following stats of the 1904 Olympics appear:
Host City: St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.A.
No. of Countries: 12
No. of Athletes: 687
No. of Sports: 14
U.s. Gold Medals won: 80
Olympic Highlights:
Boxing made its debut as an Olympic event.
Americans dominated most of the events as 539 of the 687 athletes were Americans.

I am currently trying to locate the company that manufactured this pin series to see if they will still offer the pin for sale. The name of the company is Imprinted Products Corporation, if you have any information on this company please contact me and let me know how I can get in touch with them.

Past Olympic Cities

Year

Summer

Winter

1896 Athens, Greece Not Held
1900 Paris, France Not Held
1904 Saint Louis, USA Not Held
1908 London, England Not Held
1912 Stockholm, Sweden Not Held
1916 Not Held (World War I)Not Held
1920 Antwerp, Belgium Not Held
1924 Paris, France Chamonix, France
1928 Amsterdam, Netherlands St. Moritz, Switzerland
1932 Los Angeles, USA Lake Placid, USA
1936 Berlin, Germany Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany
1940 Not Held (World War II) Not Held (World War II)
1944 Not Held (World War II) Not Held (World War II)
1948 London, England St. Moritz, Switzerland
1952 Helsinki, Finland Oslo, Norway
1956 Melbourne, Australia Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy
1960 Roma, Italy Squaw Valley, USA
1964 Tokyo, Japan Innsbruck, Austria
1968 Mexico, Mexico Grenoble, France
1972 Munich, Germany Sapporo, Japan
1976 Montréal, Canada Innsbruck, Austria
1980 Moscow, USSR Lake Placid, USA
1984 Los Angeles, USA Sarajevo, Yougoslavia
1988 Seoul, Corea Calgary, Canada
1992 Barcelona, Spain Albertville, France
1994 Not Held Lillehammer, Norway
1996 Atlanta, USA Not Held

Future Games:

1998 Will Not Be Held Nagano, Japan
2000 Sydney, Australia Will Not Be Held
2002 Will Not Be Held Salt Lake City, USA


Please visit the International Olympic Committee's Homepage

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If you have questions or comments regarding the 1904 World's Fair feel free to contact me at
Terry's 1904 World's Fair Page.