Dear Pin Pals,
These colorful
pages bring to you many new pins that you can have for your
own collection. I've been hard at work for you in the past
year (as always!) to gather the special pins that are traded
on the spot at the big international events, and creating
my own unique designs for you, inspired by the drama and
excitement of the events.
For the first
time you will see the pins resulting from my trips to the
World Championships for Figure Skating in Edmonton and from
Gymnastics in Puerto Rico and a real harvest of pins
from the most spectacular of all Summer Games in Atlanta.
Pin trading
in Atlanta was a family affair for the Volkers. My husband
Hank, our daughter Jackie, her husband Keith and I had our
booth at the center of the trading action, across the street
from the athletes' village. We were delighted to meet some
of our long-time "pin friends", people who have
ordered our pins before for their collections and made it
a point to look us up in Atlanta.
In the course
of 18 days we were visited by many, many athletes from all
corners of the globe who brought official pins from their
teams. Some are enthusiastic collectors themselves, and
others came looking for once-in-a-lifetime souvenirs. We
developed especially warm relationships with the Cuban and
Swedish teams, and one day the whole Ethiopian team (just
four athletes including a gold medalist runner) popped in
and traded the scarce pins of their nation for very special
T-shirts!
We felt very
honored that three Designs by Margarita pins were featured
in the Pin Collector 1996 book published by the Atlanta
Pin Society, with Coca-Cola sponsorship. They're in this
catalog, too see Katarina" pin on page 23, Los
Angeles '84 Angel on page 70, Los Angeles '84 Pin Collector
on page 80.
Our gymnastics
designs were especially popular with athletes and other
collectors in Atlanta. You'll see many to choose from in
the following pages, plus a wide selection of new figure
skating designs, rare pins from a variety of historic events,
and more. This catalog is also our first with pins for competitive
cheerleading/dance teams and baton twirling. Enjoy it!
Happy Pin Collecting,
from
