You must go back 237 years for the dawn of political – and patriotic – merchandise in the United States, as commemorative buttons were distributed at George Washington’s presidential inauguration.
“There was a dozen different buttons, and some said ‘Long Live The President’ because they were treating him like a king. They didn’t know what to say,” says Tony Lee, president of the American Political Items Collectors, a nonprofit membership organization dedicated to promoting the collection, preservation and study of materials relating to political campaigns and the presidency.
APIC cooperates with the Smithsonian, presidential libraries, homes, birthplaces and museums, national and local media as well as colleges and universities to facilitate the understanding of American politics using the artifacts of political campaigns. Members actively hunt for vintage buttons, ribbons, glassware, posters, pennants and more political merch.
- APIC hosts regional and local shows around the country for members and the public to buy, sell and trade political campaign memorabilia.
- The 2026 APIC National Convention runs from July 27 to August 1 at the Doubletree Boston North Shore in Danvers, Massachusetts.
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Earlier this year, Lee spoke with PPAI Media about the overlap of political and patriotic merch, what makes such memorabilia highly sought after and much more. The following interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
PPAI Media: What is the most iconic political merch found at APIC events?
Tony Lee: For any campaign, whether presidential or for local elections, there is often something that’s made that seems to outlast the campaign and that people like to collect. A lot of times, the promotional items are utilitarian, like a comb, T-shirt, umbrella. The politicians would order things that they thought people would want, like golf balls and pocket mirrors. Up until the 1990s, a lot of the political promotional items were made and sold by the campaign as a fundraiser for the campaign. Now it’s being made by vendors to sell for a profit. They’re not giving anything to the campaign.
Tony Lee
President, American Political Items Collectors
PPAI Media: Are political items made for profit less valuable than the items designed solely to show support for campaigns?
Lee: If your question is how does political stuff become valuable, the answer is scarcity. For example, there are very few Teddy Roosevelt buttons, so they’re worth a lot. Candidates who are fairly obscure like James Cox or John Davis – they were presidential nominees in the 1920s – their stuff is expensive because it’s rare. They didn’t make a lot of political items. Meanwhile, the Trump stuff is more like Beanie Babies. There’s no scarcity – they’ll make whatever is needed.
PPAI Media: Are there specific eras that collectors are especially drawn to?
Lee: Yes, eras and presidents. Anything from the 1860s is extremely collectible because of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. There were several candidates who ran against Lincoln in that period, so all of those items are rare and expensive. The next era would be from 1896-1912, that’s called the golden era of political campaign items. There were these artists creating these beautifully designed buttons, ribbons, postcards and other attractive items. They’re collectible because they’re pretty.
As far as candidates go, Franklin Roosevelt was beloved and he ran four times so there was a lot created. John F. Kennedy was also beloved. There was a Republican candidate in 1936 named Alf Landon. He got crushed, but his promotional design was sunflowers because he was from Kansas [The sunflower is Kansas’s state flower]. So, all his materials have that yellow sunflower look and it’s very pretty, so his memorabilia has become very collectible.
PPAI Media: I see your background is in journalism, so how did you get involved with APIC?
Lee: I started collecting as a little kid, as most of the people in the organization did, and it’s a hobby. We have lots of shows all over the country. When we all get together, there’s no discussion of current politics. There may be an argument about why Teddy Roosevelt didn’t run for a third term, but no talking about current politics.
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Democrats, republicans and independents, we all get along great because we’re all historians. We’re curators of political history. We aren’t going to get buried with this stuff, so we’re going to keep it, preserve it, curate it and then one day pass it along to the next collector who will hopefully do the same thing.
The other thing that’s interesting is if you collect coins, stamps, baseball cards or comic books, you can find out exactly what was made. For example, in 1993, these were all the baseball cards created, so you can try to get them all. With political items, nobody has any idea what was made.
What’s really cool is something will pop up for William Jennings Bryan or William McKinley or Abraham Lincoln that no one has ever seen before because it was made for a limited quantity in some small town where the candidate passed through on the back of a train. They made eight of them for the leaders of the town, and one pops up that nobody has ever seen. We’re always surprised and amazed by things that people find.
Jesse Jackson, who passed away this year, ran for president in 1984 and 1988. He’s the perfect example of a candidate where you’ll never know what was created for his presidential run. You had small churches all over the country who would make a few buttons for their congregation. That means there are Jesse Jackson buttons in extremely limited quantity out there that never were distributed beyond where they were made.
PPAI Media: What is it about these items that interest you and the members of APIC?
Lee: I grew up in Dallas. My older brother went to college in Washington, D.C. He’d come home on break and give me protest buttons, like “Stop The War” and “Bobby Kennedy for President.” Freshman year of high school, we’re talking about the Vietnam War, and I said I have buttons from the protest. The teacher told me to bring them in, so I did, and then at the end of class, he handed me a cigar box full of old political buttons. He said, “These are my grandfather’s. I don’t collect, but it looks like you do, so here.” I just started collecting from there.
A lot of our members have a similar story. You’ll hear a lot of stories from people in their 60s or 70s about when they went into campaign offices as a kid and they were told to take whatever they want. They filled their pockets with political items. It was free and something to collect.
PPAI Media: The art of collecting is really the main driver of all this, right?
Lee: You’re right, it’s really about whether you have the collecting bug. Oftentimes, people will get into it in their 30s or 40s by inheriting their parent’s collection. But there are plenty of kids, mine included, who appreciate it, but they have no interest in taking our collections. They’d rather sell it and take the money.
PPAI Media: Is there excitement about the political items that may come from America 250?
Lee: No, the greater excitement is our members being asked to do displays of their collections at libraries and VFW halls for America 250. Something being created for America 250 isn’t political as far as we’re concerned. Our organization is focused on items that are political as opposed to patriotic. But there are patriotic things that are political. A lot of Franklin Roosevelt’s buttons are about the war effort and beating Hitler, but that’s different than “Yay, America!”
