Beginning today, Olympic memorabilia collectors from across the country and beyond will descend on Historic Savage Mill by the hundreds to buy, sell and trade every imaginable form of collectible that the Games have taken.

It's the kind of world where a plastic toy PEZ candy dispenser from the 1984 Games in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, could bring $800.

From lapel pins to winners' medals, T-shirts to Games tickets, if it is Olympic-related, it will likely be found at this sixth annual Olympic Memorabilia Show -- one of six collectors' events worldwide this year.

"People are hungry for these shows, so they will come from long distances," said John Kinnaman III, the show's founder, who runs a year-round shop called Treasures of the Games. "One of the things that created this boom in Olympic memorabilia is that there are Games every two years. Basically, now once the euphoria for the Summer Games has died down, it starts building up again for the Winter Games."

Kinnaman, 59, has seen the enthusiasm grow since he got hooked as a high school student in Munich, Germany, when a coach took him and classmates to the 1956 Games in Cortina, Italy.

He expects about 1,000 visitors to attend the show, which runs through Sunday at Antique Center III. Dealers are coming from 15 states and Lithuania. And with the area's Olympic bid, the Washington-Baltimore Regional 2012 Coalition also plans a presence.

Don Bigsby, who has operated an Olympic memorabilia show in Lake Placid, N.Y., for 18 years, intends to drive down from Schenectady.

Bigsby, 58, comes to dabble, socialize, sell about $1,000 worth of $5 pins and maybe find something rare to add to his large collection. "I have so much now that it's not easy to find something I don't have," he said.

While growing up, Bigsby laughed at stamp and coin collecting. But he loved amateur sports, and when the Olympics came to Lake Placid in 1980, he rented a house there for three weeks.

"I went to Lake Placid, and it changed my life," he said.

Through the memorabilia, Bigsby could be part of the Games without being an athlete. He came home with 40 pins from trading on the streets -- the genesis of a hobby that he says has turned into one of the top collections in the world. In 1982, he founded the Olympin Collectors Club, now 900-members strong.

Bigsby, a retired communications engineer, is spending $150,000 on a 1,700-square-foot addition to his house for his collection, which includes 20,000 pins, 20 torches, and programs and tickets from nearly all the Games. Among his prized items is a torch from the 1956 Cortina Games, valued at $15,000.

Making the 18-hour drive up from Palm Harbor, Fla., will be Bob Christianson, whose business cards say "Collector of all things Olympic."

Christianson's collection, which he estimates is worth more than a quarter of a million dollars, includes two postcards signed by Games founder Pierre de Coubertin, valued at $1,500 each. But now he concentrates on posters, mascots, credentials and tickets.

"Recently, the International Olympic Committee has realized that Olympic collectors are protectors of the heritage of the Games," Christianson said. That IOC sanction has enabled collectors to put memorabilia on display during Games, as Christianson did with 150 items during the 1996 Atlanta Games.

The allure of the hobby for him: "It's an appreciation of history. I like the Games. I like what they stand for. They stand for friendship and communication through sports."

But Christianson, 55, knows the limitations.

"As interested as the world gets in these Games, they don't have the attachment they do to baseball," he said. "The attention span is about two weeks every two years. Things don't seem to be going up in value as quickly as baseball memorabilia."

Nevertheless, there is evidence of a growing fascination with Olympic collectibles -- a hobby that for serious collectors needs ample time and money for international travel.

A year ago, the international online auction house site, eBay Inc. (www.ebay.com), showed 200 Olympic items for sale. These days, that number is 5,000.

Monitoring available offerings as he talked, Christianson said he spends a couple hours a day on the Web site. "With eBay, you can get up in the middle of the night and see the significance of items," he said.

Christianson, who has been to all the Games since 1976, came back from Sarajevo with four of those now pricey PEZ dispensers. Not knowing what they would one day be worth, he gave them to his children.

"They probably lasted two weeks," he said.

Pub Date: 3/19/99