Olympic pin mania has collectors running between landmarks and swarming a trading center

MILAN (AP) — A dozen people outside a Milan metro station on Wednesday stared intently at their phones until 8 a.m., when an Instagram post provided a location.

“Run, don’t walk: we’re in the Castello area,” said the post. “Pins are available while supplies last.”

It sent the group sprinting.

Early each morning in Milan, eager collectors have been gathering to await word of the exact spot where they can score highly prized, limited-edition Olympics pins that — if they’re fast enough — are free.

Ilaria Pasqua has gotten up and out early every day since Saturday to snag the coveted pins from YesMilano, the city's promotional agency, and she plans to complete the collection of seven neighborhoods — including Isola and Porta Venezia — and five iconic landmarks, like the Duomo. She teamed up with three collectors she met on the first day, and they have developed a system to be among the first in line.

“I know it can sound like it’s a bit extreme, and (like) it’s a waste of time. But actually, I’ve met these people that I am doing this with, so it’s nice,’’ said Pasqua, an English teacher in Milan. “It’s a way to get to know the city that you live in or are visiting. It’s also social. I’m really enjoying it, to be honest. And you take a little treasure with you home every day, so it’s fun.’’

Each day after receiving her pins, Pasqua says she stuffs them deep in her coat pocket – out of view from latecomers looking for a trade that she doesn’t want to make.

Pin collecting is an essential part of the Olympic subculture, with people traveling far and wide to the Games just to add to what is often a very substantial array of enameled pins at home.

For those with little patience for treasure hunting who want to get right down to business, Milan is the first Olympics to offer an official pin trading center since Pyeongchang in 2018.

Sponsored by Warner Brothers, it features an area where children can interact with costumed Looney Tunes characters, creating the next generation of pin-traders, along with a dozen tables where die-hard traders from as far away as the United States and Japan up boards with their wares.

Eddie Schneider of Lindenhurst, NY who has been trading pins since the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles. Among his 25,000 pins is one from the 1948 London Games, which his mother attended.

“I consider it like going to a World’s Fair every two years,” he said at the center. “You get to go different places and experience different cultures and have fun.”

Elite collectors know the intrinsic value of each category, including retail, delegation, team, sponsor, media and national Olympic committees. Japanese media pins are among the most coveted by die-hard collectors, for their rarity, while in Cortina athletes were keen to get an Iran pin and in Paris Snoop Dogg's pins were the buzziest.

Official pins incorporate the Milan Cortina 26 logo and the Olympic rings, which are produced exclusively by the Los Angeles-based pin maker Honav, the rights-holder for the Milan Cortina Winter Games and the upcoming 2028 Los Angeles Summer Games.

Honav's owner Mario Simonson said his company designed hundreds of pins and produced millions for these Games — each bearing the Honav backstamp for authenticity. The International Olympic Committee collects royalties for the use of the logo and rings.

Pins without those official features have “zero value’’ for serious traders, he said.

London resident Josh Waller, 21, collected his first pin at the 2012 Summer Games, when he was 8 years old. He now has over 10,000 stashed in his room, and brought 1,500 to Milan to trade. "Pindemonium,'' he calls it.

His collection of London Olympic pins, including vintage issues, is award-winning. He belongs to a group of online traders that exploded after the Tokyo Games, when the pandemic kept spectators at home, and he has developed software to authenticate high-value pins.

Waller is a volunteer at the pin trading center, where he said thousands of people, including athletes and families with children, lined up over the weekend to buy and trade.

“The whole pin trading community is very tight," Mark Gabriel, a Warner Brothers consumer products' executive, told the AP. He expects trading “to reach a fever pitch” on the Games’ second weekend.

Meantime, pin enthusiasts are criss-crossing the city in the early morning, in pursuit of the full YesMilano set.

They have been successful beyond the organizers’ imaginings. While city pins have long been part of the Games, YesMilano’s campaign goes further by promoting under-visited parts of the city and encouraging people to visit landmarks.

On the first day, more than 1,000 people showed up in the North of Piazza Loreto (NOLO) neighborhood. The second day at the architectural landmark, Torre Velasca, that number was 600 – as word circulated of the daily 250 limit.

Latecomers receive stickers as consolation prizes, but can purchase the YesMilano pins at official souvenir vendors for 20 euros ($24) — up from an initial 12 euros due to demand.

Beatrice Biondi got up at 6:30 a.m. to travel into Milan from Varese, an hour away, to be first in line at the Sforza Castle. It was her first shot at collecting Olympic memorabilia, after wrapping up university exams the day before.

"We had to run a bit, but we made it so we are very happy,’’ she said.

After collecting her Sforza Castle pin, she planned to add the little focaccia bag charm from the Esselunga supermarket chain, and a Coca-Cola pin from the Olympic sponsor.

‘’All the pins I can find, I will take,'' Biondi said.

AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics

Beatrice Biondi and Pietro Sartena queue up at Milan's Sforza Castle to pick up the coveted pin of the day featuring the landmark by the YesMilano city promoters, at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Mustakim Hasnath)

Pin collector Eddie Schneider of Lindenhurst, NY organizes his trading stock at the official Olympic pin center, at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Mustakim Hasnath)

Isabella Botero, a Masters student studying in Milan, displays the YesMilano pins featuring city neighborhoods and landmarks that she has collected in recent days, at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Mustakim Hasnath)

Italian luge athlete Leon Felderer poses for a photo with Italy's national pin, at the Cortina Olympic Village, during the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, Thursday Feb. 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Jennifer McDermott)

Iran's coach for Alpine women's skiing, Mitra Kalhor displays Iran's national pin for the 2026 Winter Olympics at the Cortina Olympic Village, in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, Thursday Feb. 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Jennifer McDermott)

Patrick Shannon, a coach for the Chinese skeleton team, displays China's three pin designs at the Milan Cortina Olympic Village, during the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, Thursday Feb. 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Jennifer McDermott)

A woman shows a pin she is looking to trade at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Hold on to those Thanksgiving turkeys! WKRP is coming to Cincinnati — for real this time.

“I cannot, by contract, tell you when. I cannot tell you who. But I can tell you, direct to the camera, WKRP, after 48 years, is coming to Cincinnati,” D.P. McIntire, who runs the media nonprofit that is auctioning the famous call letters, told The Associated Press. “Book it! It’s done!”

The call sign was made famous by “WKRP in Cincinnati,” a CBS television sitcom that ran from 1978 to 1982. It made stars of actors like Loni Anderson and Richard Sanders, whose bumbling newsman Les Nessman reported on a Thanksgiving promotion gone bad when live but flightless turkeys were dropped from a helicopter.

McIntire remembers watching the show’s first episode — featuring disc jockeys Dr. Johnny Fever (Howard Hesseman) and Venus Flytrap (Tim Reid) — in the living room with his parents and older sister.

“And at the end of the 30-minute episode,” he said, “I got up and I proclaimed, `I’m going to be in radio. And if I ever have the opportunity, I’m going to run a station called WKRP.’”

McIntire said he got his first on-air job at 13 as a news anchor at WNQQ “Wink FM” in Blairsville, Pennsylvania.

Fast forward to 2014, when his North Carolina-based nonprofit acquired the call sign from the Federal Communications Commission. Stations in Dallas, Georgia, and Alexandria, Tennessee, previously bore the letters.

McIntire laughs as he recalls his chat with a woman in the agency’s audio division.

He had two sets of call letters in mind. She told him he needed a third.

“Being the jokester that I am, I said, `Well, if you need three, and if it’s available, we’ll take WKRP,’” he said. “And 90 seconds later, she came back and she said, `Mr. McIntire. Congratulations. You’re the general manager of WKRP in Raleigh, North Carolina.’”

WKRP-LP — 101.9 on the FM dial — went live Nov. 30, 2015. The LP stands for “low power,” a class of station created to serve more local audiences that didn’t want mass-market content.

“Our format is what radio used to be 35 years ago in small-town America,” he said. “There is Greats of the 80s, Sounds of the 70s, 90s Rewind.”

LPFM is restricted to nonprofit organizations like his Oak City Media, and it’s definitely local.

“Your broadcast capacity is limited to 100 watts,” McIntire said. “So, your average range is between, depending on your terrain and circumstances, 4 and 12 miles (6 and 19 kilometers) in any direction. Enough to cover a small town.”

And, by necessity, it’s a low-budget affair.

The transmitter is in a corner of McIntire’s garage, between a recycling bin and the cleaning supplies. The broadcast antenna sits atop a 25-foot (7.62-meter) metal flagpole in the backyard. The studio — microphones and a mixing board hooked up to a computer — is in McIntire’s basement.

Like the WKRP of television, McIntire and his partners set out to be “irreverent.” One of their offerings is a two-hour show called “Weird Al and Friends,” focusing on the satirical works of Weird Al Yankovic.

They even had an annual Thanksgiving turkey giveaway. But don’t call the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals — they hand out gift certificates to a local grocery store.

“We don’t toss them out of helicopters,” he said with a laugh.

After more than a decade on the air, the 56-year-old McIntire decided it was time to pass the reins.

“We’re in a position where the older members like me who started the station are turning the leadership over to younger members,” he said. “They’re not interested in radio.”

They put out a call for bids to use the call letters on FM and AM radio, as well as television and digital television.

They intend to use the proceeds for a new nonprofit venture called Independent Broadcast Consultants. He said IBC will be “geared specifically toward helping these new broadcasters get up and running, get the consulting that they need in order to be, hopefully, more successful than we have been.”

Oak City Media was all set to hand off the television-related suffixes — WKRPTV and WKRPDT — when another group defaulted on the agreement, McIntire said. But he said the Cincinnati deal is in the bag, he just can’t legally discuss it.

“It will be radio,” he said. “But that’s all I can tell you at this time.”

Robert Thompson, who uses a season 2 episode of “WKRP” in his TV history class at Syracuse University, said it’s telling that people see real value in a fictional station whose call letters invoke the word “crap.”

“The value comes from the love of the characters for each other,” he said. “And now by buying this thing, the value comes from our love of the characters themselves.”

Whatever they do with the call sign, McIntire hopes they will be true to the show that inspired it.

“It has a special place in the hearts of an awful lot of people,” he said. “And we have been very, very, very proud to have been a steward of that legacy.”

D.P. McIntire leans against a deck beneath the WKRP radio antenna in the backyard of his home in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)

D.P. McIntire points to the transmitter for WKRP radio in a corner of his garage in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)

The WKRP radio antenna sits atop a 25-foot flagpole behind D.P. McIntire's home in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)

A photo of the cast members of the sitcom "WKRP in Cincinnati" sits in a window at the home of D.P. McIntire in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)

D.P. McIntire stands beneath a WKRP banner in the backyard of his home in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)