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you may browse pictures in photo gallery 1 and 2 and Soon there will also be pictures in photo gallery 3 International Sports Hall of Fame and Olympic Museum January 1980 to January 2008 - Honoring Olympics for 28 years! Eric Nash, Executive Director and CEO As Executive Director of the International Sports Hall of Fame and Olympic Museum, we welcome you to the Website of the only Public International Olympic Museum in the United States, managed successfully by Eric and Heidi Nash for the past 28 years. We display one of the largest Olympic Artifact collections, dating from the year 1896 to the present, as well as the most complete collection of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics worldwide, including one of the largest pin collection, the collectors most popular hobby. Located at one of the most beautiful places in the United States, facing the Pacific Ocean and multitudes of whales on the Central Coast of Oregon, our museum can be reached in about one hour from Salem and two hours from Portland and it can be seen by browsing the Internet worldwide and made especially for old friends and team mates I played Soccer with, as well as friends and family still living in Europe and South America. ISHFOM opened its doors in January of 1980, when our company had gift stores in California and was the official distributor for the 1984 LAOOC pin licensee and promoted the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games for four years prior to the Opening of the Olympic Games and also opened the first pin trading center in the USA. ISHFOM honors the Olympic Movement, just as I have for 72 years and the museum, which is also meant as an educational facility, sharing Olympic information about the modern and ancient Olympics as well as some of my own experiences during the years I played Soccer for River Plate, one of the top professional soccer clubs in Argentina, although as an amateur in second division and during the worldwide Summer tours, in first division. I was also active in other sports, mainly in running and sprints, in which I qualified for the 1948 and 1952 Olympics for Argentina, after coming to this country, my sports were reduced for pleasure only and to keep in good physical condition. One of the purposes of having a website is to share pictures of our extensive Olympic collection, dating from 1896 to the present, with the public. Not long ago we sold an extensive collection of thousands of duplicates to Australia and because of my advanced age, we are thinking to sell or come to an agreement for the entire museum. The website is dedicated to my wife of 40 years and our children and grandchildren who know very little about my youth, including my wife who is much younger than I am, since they were not yet born for a long time when I own life, it is only my wife and me who take time to care for the museum. When I was young and television and computers did not exist for ma long time, my mother, a top Austrian Soccer player, taught me as soon as I started to walk and I developed into a good athlete and runner. Since the clock does not stop and now being 82 years old and my wife and I take more time off and travel, I thought it be best to make the museum available to a large organization or another museum and have it in a busy area where it can be enjoyed by many more people than it will do here in Depoe Bay, Oregon, where Whale watching across the street is much more popular than visiting a sports museum. If you are interested in Sports and Olympics, I hope you will find this website as interesting as it was for me to build it and re-live some of the wonderful experiences and moments I had in my younger years. We will constantly try to update and improve it and if you want to give us your feedback, do so on the bottom of this page. New pictures will also be uploaded and available soon, and thank you very much for visiting this site.
email checked daily at: enash327@yahoo.com checked once a week at: museum@olympicsource.org Telephone: Summer: 541-765-2923 Winter: 702-346-1776 Our address is 110 NE Hwy 101, P.O. Box 166, Depoe Bay, Oregon 97341-0166
INTRODUCTION The International Sports Hall of Fame and Olympic Museum (ISHFOM) is meant as a Sports and Olympic Museum with an Educational Center open to the public. It features an extensive Olympic artifact collection from all the Olympic games of the modern era dating from 1896 to the present. Being involved in Olympics for seventy two years and attending most of the games since 1936, as well as witnessing the very first torch lighting ceremony in Olympia at age ten and also researching the history of the ancient Olympics and viewing and researching the sites of the ancient temples, I have had the incentive since many years, to establish an Olympic museum with my large collection and share it with the public. The opportunity arose in January 1980, when I had the opportunity to open some gift stores in Orange County, California and we helped promote the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and the Torch Relay and also start the first pin trading center in the United States, where we sold the original 1984 pins and pin sets, for which we were one of the advisers of the different pin designs and distributors for the LAOOC pin licensee Ooh La La of Los Angeles and after the Olympics were able to purchase all remaining pins and pin sets from the licensee, which were the last pins that were officially regulated and not mass produced, as was later done by several licensees. ISHFOM and it's Educational Center welcomes anyone interested in Sports and Olympics and while our priority lays in guiding the world's youth in the right direction, we emphasize the virtues of competitive sports, the importance to complete education, maintain a healthy body and mind and be dedicated and disciplined in sports and most importantly abstain from the use of drugs, tobacco and indulgence of alcohol, three evils that destroys one's entire life. Being born into a family involved in Sports and Olympics, Sports came natural to me when growing up in Austria, Bolivia and Argentina with my priority to be active in sports and my studies. In 1955, my life took a sudden and abrupt change because of a political situation and I left Argentina and came to the USA where my parents resided. With Soccer not being a paid sport in those days, I concentrated on business ventures and having graduated in Sports Administration and Management, in 1980, I opened the only Public International Olympic Museum in the United States and promoted the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. ISHFOM honors the Olympic Movement and pays homage to the sacred Olympic Flame and its symbolic Torch Relays of ancient and modern times with displays of Olympic Torches, Torchbearer Uniforms, Miners Lamps used to transport the Mother Flame by land sea and air and other related items of past Olympic Torch Relays. Since the 1984 Olympics, we have promoted upcoming Olympics in cooperation with Olympic Organizing Committees and other entities, by arranging special exhibits of the upcoming Olympics and Torch Runs, which were attended by local and state officials and covered by the media. ISHFOM honors many Gold Medal Winners of the entire world that stood out and excelled during past Olympics, by placing commemorative plaques on the museum's "Wall of Champions" and displays other items that relate to their fame, to honor these Olympians which are remembered in our Hall of Fame. I started collecting pins and Olympic memorabilia at age ten, when I attended the 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in the Bavarian Alps and the same year also the Summer Olympics in Berlin, as well as most other Olympics for the last 72 years. I have experienced pin trading at its best, when it was a means of true exchange based on friendship and not material gains as it has turned out to be in the United States, when many "pin dealers" some of them wealthy, go to the Olympics not to enjoy them, but to make money, especially after 1984, when mass produced commercial pins of practically no value were flooding the U.S. market and ruined the excitement and dedication that used to be pin trading for serious collectors as I have experienced in past times, which ended with the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. I have never taken advantage of my Argentine Accreditation and sold anything during Olympics when I was carrying it, other than trading pins for my collection and not as I have witnessed, wealthy "pin dealers" taking advantage and cheating the unaware local public, as it happened in Nagano in 1998 and in other Olympics before and after. I can only hope for a return of the old standards as it used to be until 1984 and mostly still is in Europe and other countries. Now even some NOC's have joined certain dealers for greed to make big profits, charging exorbitant prices for their NOC pins that cost them a few cents. My advise for worthwhile pin collecting, are Media and Television pins and the real NOC pins, that still come from the old honest countries that consider the Olympics an ideal and not a means to make money and big profits, using the Olympic Movement for it with dishonor. Another thing to be cautious about are the many fakes that are being produced by people for profiteering, which have absolutely no collector's value.
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