A powerful practice has swept across the expansive reaches of the Expo, consuming all who is exposed to it. Pin trading is the name, and all have fallen. What is being worshipped? Little pieces of metal, coming in a range of all shapes and sizes, beauty and grossness. Who are the followers? The armies of expo workers, from pavilion staff to volunteers, all shamelessly indulging in pin sharing debauchery.

Glory comes in the form of that shiny row of pins hung around your neck. They are medals of your negotiating prowess and investment choices. They represent sweat, blood and an unholy amount of saliva (pin-trading is thirsty business). Caught around the Expo site without any pins? Well, good luck receiving easy access into pavilions, making intra-pavilion friends, finding volunteers to do your job for you or getting anything you want done at the Expo.

So how did such a nerdy past time become the leisure of choice at the Expo? It’s a mystery, but rumor has it that pin-trading was started long ago at an Expo no longer worth remembering. Pins had been created as a hallmark of pavilions, but eventually turned into the currency of choice between any Expo exchange. Since then, it has been present at every Expo to follow, amassing more power each time to ultimately become a fundamental part of the Expo itself. Now at the Expo 2010 Shanghai, you are nobody until you are a pin collector.

So which are the most coveted of them all? From the mouths of a weathered pin traders, it seems that the market favors two pins in particular: a giant maple leaf from the Canada Pavilion (with gorgeous lines, well-defined ridges and the perfect combination of gold and Canadian red) and the other treasure is the South African Mandela pin (a tribute to Nelson Mandela, consisting of a simple but elegant silver disk etched with Mandela’s silhouette). Sounds plain? Well, here is the secret beauty of pin trading: it is hardly about the size or shininess of a pin that makes it valuable; there lies great importance in meaning as well. Emphasis on culture and identity are alive in those pins, and careful consideration goes into the design of each and every one of them, ensuring that they represent in just the right way. The point is, these pins are so special because there is a kind of national power that can be clearly felt behind them, sort of…weighty in their meaning or design. It also helps that these pins were produced only once and only in limited quantities for rarity has always helped in the competition for value.

To illustrate how pin trading at the Expo is almost like an elite art auction, one has to understand that the real pin traders are not the ones who carry their pins on a lanyard around their necks like some gaudy merchant, the real pin trader keep the pins they are willing to trade in a discreet place, like in their pockets. There are usually only a few pins they use for trading at a time, often duplicates of pins they already have, and good ones too. The rest of their collection is sitting at home, in specially made pin binders (courtesy of Taobao), where page after page of shining metal wait to assert their value years down the road. These are the heavy-weights in the Expo pin trade, but no one knows who they are.

There you have it folks, Expo pin trading. I have exposed all its secrets before you and stirred a hidden yearning inside you. But before I head out to conquer and convert, one more thing: I’m currently searching for the pin of Bhutan. Anyone got one?

Image sourced from the Sweden pavilion