The bulk of my collection is my general presidential pinback collection. Political buttons as we know them were first used in the 1896 election between William Mckinley and William Jennings Bryan. I collect pins from the 1896 to the 1960 Presidential elections with an emphasis on those produced...
Collecting General Presidential Memorabilia
Campaign Button “Restoration”: cleaning, polishing and repair
Restoration of collectibles is controversial to say the least. In the sports card field there have been some very high profile examples with fraud accusations and litigation; most related to freshening the edges but some have even challenged cleaning without disclosure. Fortunately our hobby hasn’t reached that level of...
Thoughts on Regional Scarcity of Political Campaign Material; “fish where the fish are”
Benny Brandvold MD Before eBay, collecting in “the wild” meant what you found depended on what was originally distributed in the area or was transplanted as families relocated. No one understands regional campaign item scarcity more than a locals collector; imagine trying to put together a Massachusetts locals collection...
Collecting Third Party Items
Early in the history of our republic, political parties were fluid and often short lived. Since the Civil War, we have had two very stable political parties though they have switched philosophies as to the balance of the power of the federal government versus state’s rights. Throughout our history...
A Study of Western Button Manufacturers
When I began collecting political items in the late sixties, I lived in Montana which was insulated from the organized political collecting world. Without a senior mentor, my only source of information on collecting was initially Dick Bristow’s, Illustrated Political Button Book and later Tom French’s periodical, The Political...
APIC American Political Items Conservators/Collectors
The APIC is an organization dedicated to the collection, conservation and study of political campaign items. Members benefit from a monthly newspaper, The Bandwagon, and a full color quarterly magazine ,The Keynoter, which contains scholarly articles on collecting topics. Its website offers information about identifying reproductions and upcoming regional...
“Unique” and Near “Unique” Presidential campaign pins
In hobbies like stamp and coin collecting “never before seen items” virtually never come into their respective hobbies. They are invariably print or strike errors and are “priceless” ie. above the pocket book of all but the wealthy. In political collecting, items from earlier elections that have never been...
“Beat ’em to a Frazzle” A New Teddy Roosevelt Pin Comes to the Hobby
A remote Eastern Washington auction house posted a number of political button lots to eBay’s live auction site. One of the lots contained a 1 3/4″ Theodore Roosevelt pin I had not seen before. The photograph posted did not allow a zoom option and glare precluded discerning its text....