Not long after the security guards arrive every morning, Molly Baker sets up a small seat near a security entrance at the Olympic Green. She lays out three squares of velvety black fabric covering. Then she sits down for the day.

Baker is an Olympic pin trader. Her wares are thumb-sized pins featuring Olympic logos and sponsors collected everywhere from Los Angeles in 1984 to Lillehammer in 1992 and Sydney in 2000 to Beijing in 2008.

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Molly Baker and her pins

These days, she spends her time surrounded by dozens of Beijing citizens who crouch down on the sidewalk and run their hands across her collection. Many of them don’t have pins to trade but they make proposals all the same.

“This is the most intense I’ve ever seen pin fever,” Baker said. “Los Angeles ’84 was one of the best. Barcelona was pretty good. But neither were like this. They won’t let me fold up most days.”

When JumpTV’s Nada Usina told me about pin trading at the Olympics this spring, I’d never heard of it. What I envisioned was a large area surrounded by stadiums where people casually traded pins. No rules. No structure. Just a nice tradition similar to the swapping of jerseys at the end of international soccer matches.

After all, how excited can someone get about pins?

In China, the answer is a lot.

“Tell her I only trade country for country,” Baker said to Chang Shuo, her 23-year-old interpreter, as a girl pointed to a pin showing a Canadian flag.

Chang latched onto Baker during her first week in Beijing. He passed by, stopped and decided to stay because “she had so many pretty pins.” Now, he comes back most days and helps her communicate.

Chang Shuo has served as Baker's translator because "she had so many pretty pins."

He says the reason the pins are so popular in China is because people there are collectors.

“Everybody likes this because this looks so beautiful,” he said. “Someone said this is fantastic.”

Coca-Cola, the official brand of the Olympic trading center, claims the tradition of Olympic pin trading dates back to 1896 when Olympians exchanged pins as a goodwill gesture. The first official pins of different styles were made in 1908.

Today, pins come in every shape and size and feature everything from countries to media companies to sponsors. Almost every sponsor has a set made for the Olympics. The best one I’ve seen in Beijing was by AT&T. It’s a flip-phone pin that actual opens in complete “Zoolander” fashion.

I showed mine to Baker and swung a trade for a Coca-Cola pin with Chinese characters and a CCTV pin with the five-rings logo.

“I love it,” Baker said, as I handed her the phone. “Do you have any others?”

But it was tough for her to take time to look. A crowd of seven Chinese men and women were squatting and pointing at her pins. One woman shows here a pin and points at the one she would like to trade for.

“Is it Olympics?” Baker said, grabbing the pin and looking at it. “I can’t tell. I don’t have my glasses.”

It turns out it’s not an Olympic pin, but Baker makes the trade anyway.

“I can’t say no,” she said. “I’m so horrible.”