A Groundswell of Support Building for Campaign Collectibles
At first glance, the black-and-white button promising “Honest Government” from John W. Davis and Charles W. Bryan seems hardly worth a second glance. But to political collectors Steven and Gary Cohen, it’s worth a cool $150,000, the highest known price ever paid for an American campaign pin, experts say.
Small wonder the brothers--Gary is a Las Vegas political-memorabilia collector-dealer, and Steven heads a Connecticut day-trading firm and bankrolls his sibling’s big buys--chose to put Davis-Bryan on layaway. Small wonder, too, that the seller, Washingtonian Robert Fratkin, a Salomon Smith Barney portfolio manager, will keep it locked in a Virginia bank vault until he gets the last payment in July for what experts say is the only known example of this particular 1 1/4-inch pin touting these two White House contenders.
No matter that Davis and Bryan, nominated on the 103rd ballot of the 1924 Democratic convention, were trounced by Republicans Calvin Coolidge and Charles Dawes.
“We’ve had 76 years for another Davis-Bryan [button] to show up, and it hasn’t,” says Americana dealer and auctioneer Al Anderson of Troy, Ohio. “Yes, it was a manufactured item, meaning there may have been a lot of them made [it was worn with a ribbon at the Utah State Democratic Convention], but the feeling is it was never put into mass circulation. And the Cohen brothers are very aggressively pursuing and building what is, if it isn’t already, the finest political-memorabilia collection ever assembled.”
To non-collectors, $150,000 seems a staggering sum for a bit of paper, celluloid and metal, considering that the estimated 300 surviving metal buttons heralding George Washington’s 1789 inauguration fetch a comparatively modest $1,800 to $2,500.
“Rarity and the superheated economy” account for the high price, says Larry Bird, curator of the Smithsonian’s 150,000-piece political collection in the National Museum of American History.
Like the arts and antiques markets, the star-spangled world of campaign collectibles is ruled by supply, demand and condition. And nowhere is supply or demand greater than around Washington, ground zero for campaign junkies and political memorabilia, say collectors.
In a presidential election year, $10 million can easily change hands locally for old and new buttons, bumper stickers, dishes, sashes, pens, license plates, puppets, clothing and myriad other objects, says Political Americana
shop owner Jim Warlick, who produces much of the Republican and Democratic merchandise he sells.
“What’s really neat,” says auctioneer Anderson, “is that people whose budget is $30 or $40 can get items all the way back to President McKinley in 1896. Even a William Henry Harrison button goes for $30. That’s amazing for a 160-year-old piece of history.”
And what a history, says collector Fratkin, eager to teach: The earliest political items were utilitarian because the young nation was “Calvinist, not frivolous.” George Washington inaugural buttons were made to be sewn on clothing. Their number (250 to 300 known) and low demand have kept their prices relatively modest, he says.
From 18th century England came pottery with U.S. political images such as Washington and Jefferson. On one cup, James Monroe’s name is “Munro,” Fratkin says.
In the 1820s, tokens resembling pocket change became voguish. In the 1830s came cloth campaign ribbons sporting steel engraved drawings of candidates’ faces. The mid-19th century brought ferrotypes--photographic image emulsions on metal.
By 1900, celluloid, an early form of plastic, was used for campaign shirt collars and buttons, including the legendary Davis-Bryan. In 1914, direct printing on metal using color lithography was perfected, allowing mass production of buttons. Both processes are still used.
Homey items also endured, including aprons, mugs and potholders. But post-Watergate campaign-finance reform made it illegal to give voters things of value, Fratkin says. That opened the door to vendors such as Warlick, who quit his Capitol Hill job in 1980 to make and sell buttons. In 1996, he says, he grossed $3 million.
To understand the range of collectibles, one should attend an American Political Items Collectors’ show (https://www.collectors.org/apic), July 19-22 in Hagerstown, Md., says dealer Nelson Whitman of Capitol Coin & Stamp Co. in Washington.
White House counselor Ann Lewis was at the collectors’ show last month in suburban Maryland seeking women’s suffrage items.
“I used to say I had the world’s greatest hobby because it was inexpensive and there was little competition,” Lewis said. “Now it’s been discovered. A copy of the ‘Women’s Bible’ by Elizabeth Cady Stanton just went for $12,000.”