December 14 - Coca-Cola have released more details about their plans for both the Coca-Cola Pin Trading Centres (CCPTC) and Olympic Torch Relay (OTR) next year.


Pin Trading Centres
The locations for the Olympic Park and Central London venues are almost finalised and they hope to be able to announce details in the New Year. There will also be a pin trading opportunity within the Athletes' Village. This will be a low key area in one of the spaces within the Village with access limited to discrete times of the day for a few pin traders.

Plans for the volunteers are still being finalised by Coca-Cola, but they have confirmed that there will be interviews next year to determine who will be offered a role as a Coca-Cola pin ambassador. Successful ambassadors will be provided with a uniform for the times they are in the CCPTC. Initial thoughts are that trading hours will be around 10am to 10pm in the park and 8am to 10pm in London, so there should be plenty of volunteering opportunities. Coca-Cola will be working on more detailed plans for the centres next year and at that time will be talking with representatives from pin collectors in the UK and overseas in order to canvass their opinions on pin trading centres.

Olympic Torch Relay
As for the Olympic Torch Relay, there will not be a Coca-Cola retail pin for every stop on the route, but there will be pins to mark five locations where Coca-Cola are hosting an event on the relay. Merchandising and pin plans are still being discussed within Coca-Cola, but the thinking seems to be that collectors will be able to pick up a full set of retail Coca-Cola OTR pins without touring the country. How and where the pins may be purchased is still not confirmed.

The first internal Coca-Cola OTR pin has been issued (above, COC0007) and it is only available to certain employees, it was not distributed company wide.