Back in Houston

Thinking about the election and shuffling through our drawers recently, we came across a couple of nice mementos from the Republican Convention. Just a few political pins is enough to bring it all back, the lights, the balloons, the crowds...where a peek around the halls of the media building exposed excessive amounts of pin trading, the true convention fad.

Most all groups of conventioneers here appeared to have caught the fever--from journalists to volunteers and from youngsters to the elder contingent.

"There's nothing else to do here when the other action stops," said Howard Lee, a youth volunteer from Houston. "We have a bunch of free time."

Some traders like the shiny pins, others like ones with blinking lights, but everyone agrees on the hottest items around the convention.

"Pins from the three primary networks and the top newspapers are treated like gold," says Ernie Jew, and ABC employee from New York. He had so many pins on his plastic credentials cover that the credentials were hardly visible.

Jew said the most coveted pins floating around were the Washington Post pin, reading "NBC Barcelona 92" and an ABC pin that has a microphone sticking out. "Now that's a tough one to find."

The mecca of the "game" was located at a tall stop sign at the center of the Astrohall, where the building branches off in six directions. At that spot, it was common to see up to a dozen fanatics crowding in a circle, engaged in a bidding war for key trades.

The trick to accumulating the pins, according to the players, depends on one's ability to out-manoeuver the other traders with convincing sales pitches. Of course, to start from scratch, many must find free handouts from promotions or work on some of the nicer TV stations.

And if that doesn't work, "Just plead poverty and someone might be kind to you," Jew says.

Of course it doesn't hurt to be a bit deceitful when you get a little better at the trade. But word gets around. By the last day of the convention, it was common to hear phrases like "Don't trade with him" and "He's not trustworthy."

Unfortunately, for some traders, many pins depreciate as the convention progresses. Lee, the youth volunteer, said that some of his early finds plummetted Wednesday and Thursday.

"Pins from CNN and Fox have flooded the market and gone way down in value," says Lee as he traded one of his few treasures, an NBC "Barcelona `92" beauty for one with the Washington Post logo.

And that's where it helps some pin-collecting veterans to bring trading strategies into the convention.

"I just collected all the ones I didn't get at the Democratic convention last month in New York," Jew says.

A few of the traders who were lucky enough to get into the convention complex said they were collecting for others not so fortunate.

"I'm doing it for my father," says a middle-aged Keith Grammer, a Houston resident working at the convention for AT&T. He said that he had accumulated 85 pins, including a San Francisco Giants piece that his father will treasure. "And I got my hands on some other trinkets here as well, including a few coffee cups."

Jonathan Garrett, a photographer for Reuters in Houston said that he knows exactly what to do with his newly found treasures when the convention comes to a close.

"I'm going to keep them until the next convention in four years and start all over again," he says.