Olympic Collectors Fair Opens in Chicago

(ATR) In a first for the U.S., the world’s biggest gathering for collectors of Olympic memorabilia is underway in Chicago.

The four-day World Olympic Collectors Fair is the 17th held under the auspices of the IOC commission for memorabilia. More than 80 collectors from around the world are exhibiting through the weekend at a convention center near O’Hare Airport.

IOC member Gerhard Heiberg, who chairs both the IOC marketing and collectors' commissions, is in Chicago to attend the fair as well as meet with worldwide Olympic sponsor McDonald’s, headquartered nearby.

"I think this is a fantastic way of promoting the Olympic Games, our values, our ideals, and to do it in perhaps a more systematic way than we have done before," Heiberg tells Around the Rings.

"We have never had this fair on American soil."

He says he wanted to see how interest is developing and to talk to collectors. "We had a fantastic experience in China last year," he says. "After the Olympics in August 2008, the interest for memorabilia exploded. I want to see how you do it here to feel the interest here."

The show is being held in conjunction with the National Sports Collectors Convention, which attracts more than 30,000 visitors a year.

Some wandered into the "Olympic Pavilion," with quite a few asking, "Got any boxing?"

"Miracle on Ice" tickets sold by the Lake Placid Winter Olympic museum were hot, with hockey collectors learning exactly which ticket was used for the 1980 U.S.-USSR game.

The aim was to bring new people into the hobby. "Some of them will come to see the Olympic stand and maybe we have attracted some of them," Heiberg says. "I want to be part of it."

He says there is a tendency that only older people are collecting. "We need also to get the young people interested in collecting stamps, coins, pins and other memorabilia from the Games. So this is a good opportunity."

A New Pin for Collectors

Heiberg gave every table holder two new items for their collections: A pin with the fair logo and a diploma signed in facsimile by IOC president Jacques Rogge. He was accompanied by Jim Greensfelder, the only U.S. member of the collectors' commission, Don Bigsby, president of the Olympin Collectors Club and Peter Wade, an Olympin board member.

Heiberg says pins are a good entry point to the hobby because they usually don't cost very much.

"I remember in Lillehammer, some of them were very expensive, and I thought even I can't afford them," he says, "but hopefully they start, they get interested in this and in that way you get interested in the Olympics,the values and the ideals.

"You feel, 'I want to be part of it, I want to buy part of it,' so pins are one way of entering."

His favorite piece of Olympic memorabilia is the torch he ran with. The Lillehammer torch, made of wood, is the largest ever made. "That's on my wall. And I will never, never sell it," he says.

Heiberg, who led Lillehammer's Olympic organizing committee, also treasures the Olympic Order in gold, which he received from IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch at the Closing Ceremony.

"I look at it from time to time," he says with a smile, "and my heart can feel it."

Heiberg was open to adding new items to his collection.

"I have brought some money," he says. "I will go around and have a look. I'm a collector and so I am curious."

He says that's why he is chairman of the commission. He has collected stamps or coins since he was 5 or 6 years old, then went into sport memorabilia and Olympics. "But I have collected too much," he says, noting that his house is filled with stuff from the Olympics and other events -- not always to the delight of his wife.

"I have always been interested," he says. "If there's something I like, I may buy it."

Written and reported in Chicago by Karen Rosen.