Constable: Campaign buttons for fun, not investment

The first item on the “Make America Great Again” agenda of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, was to craft a replacement logo to replace the oft-mocked original. The new logo, prominent as the GOP Convention kicked off Monday in Cleveland, features a blue “Trump” above the word “Pence,” written in smaller red letters.

The original logo, featuring the stem of the T penetrating the loop of the P, fell to the wayside soon after its unveiling on Friday inspired a barrage of snickering and jokes about how the TP appeared sexually suggestive, or, at best, a reminder to buy toilet paper.

“I think they'll have more value after the change,” predicts Ron Wade, a Texas collector who's selling original Trump-Pence buttons sporting the “short-lived logo version” for $4.50 each on ronwadebuttons.com.

“Collectors do like oddities,” says Steve Ferber of the presidential memorabilia website LoriFerber.com, named for his wife. But he doesn't see the ill-advised Trump-Pence logo as a moneymaker.

“It's not something I think would rise to the level of the Chicago Tribune error of 'Dewey Defeats Truman,'” Ferber says in reference to the newspaper's infamous mistake of proclaiming Thomas Dewey as winner of the 1948 presidential election. People who bought that paper on the street that morning for 4 cents can sell it now for $2,500, says Ferber, who has been in the presidential memorabilia market for 43 years.

“Collecting shouldn't be looked at as an investment,” cautions Bernadette Rouse of Park Ridge, a former Fremd High School history teacher, who used to join in the political memorabilia programs hosted by her husband Bob, leader of the local American Political Items Collectors (APIC.com.us) chapter.

While some of the items collected by Bob Rouse, who died in 2008 at age 65, sold for good prices at auctions, his widow advises collectors to buy items they actually want.

“Anything that generates controversy can certainly be something that is collected,” says Ron Puechner, president of the APIC, who quickly advises against building a retirement plan on campaign-button speculation.

At the group's biannual convention in Pennsylvania earlier this month, plenty of once-coveted campaign buttons ended up in “the buck-a-button box.” The mass production of buttons and the new marketplace on the internet have changed the landscape for collectors, but Puechner says this year's convention drew a record crowd that included 400 registered members, 150 guests and a few hundred curious visitors.

Winning candidates traditionally are more popular than losers, but Democratic runner-up Bernie Sanders created a buzz among some collectors, Puechner says.

“It's always hard to tell what collectors will embrace in the years to come,” says Ferber.

There is a campiness value to memorabilia of “hopefuls” or failed candidates, but not much real value. The Marco Rubio bobblehead, symbolic of why his campaign might have fallen short, shows an admittedly “little Marco” standing on a U.S. flag in the shape of a star. It lists for $24.95 “and they sell very, very slowly,” says Ferber,

“Bobbleheads, they're fun, but I've never seen one go up in value,” says Wade, who says he launched his political buttons website in retirement just as a way to keep his hobby going, not to make a fortune. “The buttons they sell on the street will be the same price or less because they make billions of them.”

A more-rare Illinois delegate's pin (without Ronald Reagan's name) from the 1980 Republican National Convention in Detroit sells for $24.95 at LoriFerber.com.

In addition to being the first mainstream female candidate for president, Hillary Clinton will bring another first to next week's Democratic National Convention - a logo trademark. Everything on Clinton's official “Hillary for America” website, including her logo with the blue H and a red arrow pointing right, “are the proprietary property of HFA or its licensers or users and are protected by U.S. and international copyright laws,” reads her website.

That should cut into the supply of those buttons. Their future value (and the fate of our nation) hinges on how much demand Clinton generates.