www.olympic.org - Site Officiel du Mouvement Olympique
PHILATELY AND NUMISMATICS
Two unique collections that bring the history of the Olympic Movement to life
STAMPS
Stamp of a lepton
featuring wrestlers, issued
for the Athens Olympic
Games in 1896.
The Olympic Games owe a lot to postage stamps - they saved the Athens Games in 1896. The Organising Committee's budget was deeply in debt so a Greek stamp collector suggested issuing a commemorative series of 12 stamps to balance the books. The income from these stamps helped build the 4 last sites of the Athens Games. Olympic philately was born.
The Olympic Museum exhibition houses more than 12 000 stamps and other philately documents. The collection of the President of the IOC forms its core holding. It is absolutely unique because it only contains blocks of four Olympic stamps. Juan Antonio Samaranch donated his personal collection to the Museum in 1989. He began to collect stamps in 1945 after his father offered him his first Olympic series - the Athens Olympics of 1896.
COINS
Coin issued by the Austrian mint
in 1995 for the centenary
of the IOC.
The collection of Olympic coins covers all official Olympic items : the first coins minted in 1951 (for the Helsinki Winter Games in 1952) to those issued for the Sydney Games in 2000.
For more information on these coins and other numismatic treasures, be sure to visit the Olympic Philately, Numismatic and Memorabilia Commission site.
PERMANENT EXHIBITIONS
AGENDA
Come to the Olympic Museum for exhibitions, lectures, concerts, etc.