Adventures of the Search 4/20/13

Went on a little trip down the highway on the hunt for the more elusive political items. The first real antique shop on HWY 99 in Sherwood is the Trading Post. It is a neat little shop. Has lots of stuff that folks who are not looking for political items would love.



I was able to find a few items, none of which I ended up purchasing. The first item I found while looking around at the first vendor spot was this huge 9" Bill Clinton. The seller wanted $42.50 for the pin. If you are a hunter of political items then this is an all too common sight. This pin was made by one of the big national political vendors. Most likely a Tigereye Design pin. Don't get me wrong, TD does some great pins and they were even the go to place for the Obama campaign in 2008, but that doesn't make this pin anywhere close to 40 dollars. Five or ten maybe, if someone is feeling generous on ebay.

All you can do is just shake your head and move on. The next items I found are more common and older than the Clinton '96 pin. Mark Evans is always asking about them. That's right. Those wonderful Nixon Now's!  They were priced at $2.00 each. These are way better priced than the Clinton pin. Nixon Now's are the staple of any starter collection. If there was a membership kit for new APIC members a Nixon Now would be included! These pins were made in the thousands and made available all over the country during the 1972 campaign. Odds are if you know someone old enough, they probably have one somewhere. As I have plenty of these, I passed, even on the more reasonable price of $2.00 each.

There was another political item for sale at this shop. It was also from the 1970s. It was a Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale jugate poster. It had some water damage on the bottom right hand corner, but that didn't stop the seller from wanting $17.50 for a damaged poster.

These posters were used nationwide during the 1976 campaign. Even if I really needed one, I'd want one that doesn't have water damage. You can pick these up on ebay for 5-10 dollars most days of the week.

I'm not saying that you can't find interesting things at antique shops anymore or deals for that matter. This shop has one vendor that has a bowl of mostly non-political buttons, but has some political buttons that are more or less reasonably priced. While they may be inconsistently priced, like $3.00 for a Elect-McKay Senator pin from 1956 and a #1.50 Willkie-McNary litho they are all under 5.00 for the most part.

There was another shop I visited after the Trading Post. It is called Wine Country Antiques Mall. It is in Newberg. There wasn't much in terms of political items, a Goldwater button that I didn't photograph, and this lot of various political and union pins. For an Oregon collector, the most interesting was the Elmo Smith pin. He ran against Maurine Neuberger in 1960. A few Nixon pins and an Ike pin were in the group. Lot's of union and flax festival pins. There was even a fake Bryan-Stevenson jugate. Still, not much to go on for having to spend $30.00.Other than that, I didn't find much.

The adventure is part of the fun, so go out and look for some. You never know, you may find a great item amongst the clutter.