Calgary ‘88 Winter Olympic torch featured on ‘Pawn Stars’ episode

An Edmonton man recently took his 1988 Olympic torch to Las Vegas and History Channel's 'Pawn Stars' to see what he could get for it.

Decades later, souvenirs from Calgary’s Winter Olympics in 1988 are still being bought, sold and traded.

Though the value such objects depends on how much a collector is willing to pay.

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Richard Korbyl is the owner of an Olympic torch.

His family runs Columbia Awards in Edmonton, the shop asked to inscribe the handles of the torches with images of the Olympic sporting events.

“Only 147 were made, which makes the Calgary Winter Olympic torch the second most rarest torch,” he said. “Ours is unlit, which makes it even more rare. I believe there’s two or three in the world like this.”

Korbyl says five years ago, a similar unlit torch sold for US$49,000 in a major sports memorabilia auction.

It was that sale that prompted Korbyl to reach out to the producers of The History Channel’s Pawn Stars reality television show.

He and his torch were accepted, and filmed a segment set to air on Feb. 26 – Season 23, episode four.

“I walk in, and Rick Harrison says, ‘What do we have here,’ and I laid down the torch, and Rick is speaking for a good five solid minutes,” said Korbyl.

“I have to be honest, it was like, ‘When do I speak?’ But they’re really nice guys. It was a great experience to show off some of this Alberta heritage.”

Korbyl was asking $50,000 for his unlit Olympic torch, but couldn’t come to terms with the hosts of the show to make a sale.

Pin trading

While the games were on, there was a pin trading culture born in Calgary with collectors meeting downtown or at venues to trade pins.

Some of those rare pins were selling for hundreds of dollars, but the majority were priced at just a couple of bucks.

Scott Hayes is a member of the Calgary International Pin Club, which got its start shortly after the games.

He says 1988 was when he started collecting.

“It was everywhere! You could trade almost anything and there were people wearing vests (covered in pins) trading everything,” he said.

“At the end of the Olympics, they sold everything for $0.10 on the dollar, so if you bought a pin for $5, it’s worth $0.50, but there are some still valuable today.”

Hayes says some collectors are still offering $50 to $150 for pins they need to round out their collections.

He recently sold two frames filled with 240 pins for $300 each to a person who only wanted only one pin in each frame.

“I’m sure I could have probably got $600 for those two pins alone,” he said.

Vintage clothing

Ryan Trabadello owns a vintage clothing store in downtown Calgary called The Portal, and has a number of clothing items for sale tied to the Olympic games.

“I wasn’t around for the Olympics back then, (I was born) a decade too late,” he said.

“But I just find this stuff super cool, the fact that this is the only Olympics that we had, there’s a bunch of this cool gear.”

Trabadello says he finds clothing with Olympic crests through things like estate sales.

“We try to price our things a little bit less than what they go for online,” he said.

“We have jackets going on for about $150 and this sweater we have it at $88.88.”

Trabadello says if nothing else, the vintage Olympic clothing generates conversation.

“Some of the older generation who were there, it’ll bring back a lot of memories – and some of them have talked about the pin trading that went on during that time,” he said.

“Then the younger folks come in and it’s like some people didn’t even know that we had like Olympics in ’88, so I just think it’s like a cool piece of history for the city.”