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Shopping Games on

AFP,Athens
They don't need an opening ceremony, just an open-ended credit limit. The 'geek' Olympics are in full swing in Athens, with fans from around the world trying to beg, barter or buy more Games memorabilia than the next guy.
Some are easy to spot, like Seiji, 45, of Japan. Only the rim of his baseball cap was visible under the Olympic pins that had taken over the rest of it, like wild thyme on a Greek hilltop.
"I exchanged them with people on the street," he said.
"I show them my stock of pins," Seiji said, taking a fistful of pins depicting Japanese icons from Pikachu to a Geisha girl from a bag around his waist, "and if they want, they take one in exchange for an Olympic pin."
Seiji has been swooping Olympic pins since the 1988 Games in Seoul. Since then, he's been to every summer Games except Atlanta in 1996, and has the souvenirs to prove it.
The money he saves on pins -- one of the beautifully crafted Athens Olympic pins costs 14 euros, which would put the value of the Japanese fan's cap in the region of 300 euros (360 dollars) -- Seiji spends on Olympic clothing.
"I have bought many things at the official shop," he said, admitting to buying a new T-shirt -- around 25 euros each -- almost every day since he got to Athens two weeks ago.
Alice, 60-something, from California, was standing opposite the Greek parliament on Syntagma Square, clad in Olympic torch relay T-shirt, shorts and sun visor with a smattering of official pins.
"I have more at the apartment," she said of her pins.
Back home in California, she also has "the mascot dolls, and little mascot dolls that go on the car window with suction cups, and the Greek flag at the house."
Fresh off the plane from the US west coast, she hadn't yet had time to spend any money in Athens souvenir shops, but "we're going to, and when we do, we're not going to count."
Monica, 28, is one of hundreds of sales assistants in the maze of shops in Athens' Plaka district who help satisfy the geeks' lust for Games memorabilia.
With one day to go before the Games' start, business was brisk, she said, heaving a sigh of relief.
Three years ago, when the shop first took Olympic stock -- which it has to pay before delivery -- business was slow, very slow.
"But now, everyday we sell Olympic stuff -- to everybody, every country, every language, every face," Monica said.
As a group, she said, Greeks tied with Americans for the biggest-spender award, but an Australian took top honours for the largest outlay by a single purchaser.
"He spent 660 euros in one minute," Monica said.
"He took three Large of one model, four Mediums of another and so on until
he had taken around 29 T-shirts," she said.
Judy and Amy, from New York, were examining a display of mobile phone lanyards at a kiosk near Syntagma.
"We're buying a lot. We love the Olympic mascots," one of them said before taking seven lanyards featuring the two cartoon mascots at three euros each.
The two souvenir hunters said that, sure, they knew who the mascots were: dolls from antiquity depicting Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom, and Theevos. Or was it Feevos? Something like that.
"Many tourists have no idea who or what the mascots are," Monica said.
"Many don't know, many don't care, but they buy them because they are Olympic.
"I didn't know what they were. I had to learn for the Olympic Games," the native Athenian said.
"They are the first toys in Greece, ancient toys. They are Athena, the goddess of our city, and Phevos, who carried the cart of the sun around the earth," she explained, as an oriental woman selected enough T-shirts to fill a small pick-up truck.
In Monica's shop, the T-shirts were selling like hot cakes, and, she said: "I think that when the Games are over, they won't exist any more."
Maybe not on the shelves of Athens souvenir shops, but certainly on the backs of global Olympic geeks.