TEA, S.D. (KELO) — Political season has shifted into high-gear with this week’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. Next month, Democrats hold their convention in Chicago.
Many of those delegates are returning home with a stash of souvenirs and SWAG that could eventually become collectors items.
Here’s a look at relics of campaigns past.
Politics has a long shelf-life at I-29 Antiques in Tea.
“We go all the way back to Lincoln time, I mean, they’re just fun to look at. It’s a time capsule in history,” I-29 Antiques owner Randy Maas said.
Owner Randy Maas has been collecting political memorabilia since childhood.
“And I grew up in Huron with the state fair. You go out to the state fair, you go to both headquarters, you pick up everything you could, every button, everything. You put it in a bag and take it home, because it was free,” Maas said.
Some items that were once free back in the day are now valued in the hundreds of dollars. Take this hanky promoting presidential candidate Grover Cleveland and tariff reform back in the late 1880’s. It’s priced at $200.
“The value could be the fact that there were very few of these were made or given out. This was like a handkerchief they’d give out at conventions,” Maas said.
Memorabilia featuring native South Dakotans like the late Governor Joe Foss and onetime presidential candidate George McGovern attract buyers from across the country.
“The thing about presidential candidates, they have a following way beyond the state they came from. We’ll get people in here from the West Coast, the East Coast, from the South, wanting McGovern stuff,” Maas said.
The value of more recent political memorabilia has taken a bit of a hit through the years because so many outside groups are creating their own buttons, flags and posters and not the campaigns themselves.
“Nowadays, the candidates don’t give out buttons, they give out stickers when you go to events. Stickers, you don’t really collect. And a lot of third-party groups now put out buttons, which aren’t as collectible because the candidate himself did not authorize it,” Maas said.
Vendors say you can actually track the public’s engagement in the political process by their interest in buying collectibles.
“Major elections, presidential elections every four years, it starts peaking again. But in the off-years, then it kind of ebbs a little bit and you don’t see it. But it’s like anything that’s collectible, interest goes up and down all the time,” vendor Nels Perrault said.
Vendors, like Nels Perrault, expect interest in political memorabilia to grow the closer we get to Election Day. But he says the decline of print media means certain items are much harder to get these days.
“You’re not seeing those campaign posters, stuff like that anymore because newspapers are going away, printed stuff is getting to be less and less all the time because everybody’s going on social media,” Perrault said.
But Perrault also credits social media for creating a virtual marketplace where collectors can share information on where to track down hard to find items, political keepsakes and curiosities from campaigns past, all with a story to tell, once you button-up the research.
“It’s not just about collecting the piece. It’s finding the knowledge and the history behind the piece,” Perrault said.
Some political memorabilia are more likely to sell than others. Large campaign banners easily catch the eyes of potential buyers, while much smaller campaign buttons can go un-noticed amid all the other items on display.
