I volunteered for the Hillary campaign in Maine and have a lot of rally signs, magnets, stickers , and pins that they gave me. People tell me that it is worth keeping because it will be rare and valuable someday. Is that likely to happen within my lifetime?
Doubt it. There are people who collect political memorabilia. The rare pieces can be quite expensive but that’s because no one knew there would be people who collected political memorabilia. I doubt anything from Clinton’s campaign will be worth much anytime soon and none of it will probably be rare enough to be very valuable. And search out some of the older things that are up for sale. Collectors are mostly interested in winners.
A lot depends on how much longer your lifetime is 
Seriously, though, Mondale/Ferraro buttons apparently sell for the $10-$50 range, about the same as Carter/Mondale buttons. So, for the buttons, it wouldn’t seem that 40 years would be long enough (unless you consider $10 valuable). Now, as they say, past performance is no indication of future yield, and things can change in the collectables market pretty quickly. In general, it is the unusual, large, and hard to store items that seem to get the best prices. A Hillary bumper sticker, probably not that much. A full-sized cut-out of Hillary in a Pantsuit, on the other hand, might be worth putting in the attic in a corner where it will stay dry and not get damaged. Regardless, none of them are likely to be even a part of a profitable retirement strategy.
The only things that will be rare and valuable will be the things that nobody thought would be rare and valuable. The collectible market is driven by supply and demand. If there are thousands of people who want a Hillary pin, and only ten in existence, the price will be high. If there are 10 people who want a Hillary pin and thousands in existence, then the price will be low.
Hillary campaign ephemera going to be a lot more like the second example than the first. It’s cheap and easy to create millions of these things, and at the end of the campaign it’s all surplus and gets dumped. Anyone who wants a Hillary pin today can get as many as they like. Which means there’s almost no chance people are going to pay a lot of money for them in the future.
It’s just like comic books. Comic books from the 40s, 50s, and 60s are very valuable because almost all comic books from that era were read to pieces by kids and thrown away. Then when people realized that old comic books were collectible people stopped throwing them out. Which means that there’s a gigantic glut of comic books from the 80s, 90s, and 00s, which means that the prices for these items can’t be bid higher.
Anyway, the short answer is that if you want to keep your Hillary campaign ephemera, go right ahead. It will never be worth money as a collectible though.
I also have some Bernie Sanders campaign stuff. Could that ever become valuable?
There are supposedly some autographed copies of Newsweek’s ‘Madame President’ issue out there so I’m pretty sure they’ll be worth more than pulp one of these days.
I have an assortment of Kennedy and Nixon pins from 1960; also a couple of Willkie pins from 1940. I don’t think any of them are worth much.
Nothing will ever become valuable if thee are people saying “maybe this will be valuable someday”.
There is always the exception (Beat Nixon’s Nose Into a Plowshare and the old and favored Now’s the Time to Finish the Screw, Vote for Nixon in 72) but for the most part political crap is pretty worthless even 50 years out. Your best bets seem to be “anti” items like the Nixon examples I gave or items from someone who turned out to be both famous and tragic such as Harvey Milk.
Someone took photos of the whole issue here: Recalled MADAM PRESIDENT Newsweek - Album on Imgur
This is off topic, but I’ve heard that with sports, they print up t-shirts, hats and such with both playoff teams names and then give the wrong one to charities in places like Africa. For example you may see people wearing Cleveland Indians “World Series 2016” Championships t-shirts.
True?
I have a “Truman Was Screwy To Build A Porch For Dewey” button. Last time I looked on eBay they were going for like $20USD
At least in some cases although the numbers are actually pretty low most of the time; just enough for some post-game celebration shots and the like. In other words there aren’t tens of thousands of each size sitting around somewhere waiting for the end of the game. They are distributed in a manner that any chance of them hitting the secondary market is basically nil - future donations of both money and clothes depends on them never being seen in this country again.
(A Pastor I work with was on mission in South America and actually saw some hats with Seattle as the winners of Super Bowl XL. Being from Pittsburgh it caught his attention and he asked around.)
Stuff personally autographed by Hillary is probably salable.
I suspect the items are at their most valuable right now.
No. She had no hat. Michelle could have designed one for her:
Are WIN buttons valuable? Same answer.
This. Collectibles produced after collectibles became a thing (early 1970s, IIRC) aren’t that valuable, because people hung onto all that stuff from the get-go, so they’re abundant.
What makes earlier campaign buttons, comics, etc. more valuable is that nobody thought they had value, so they mostly wound up in the landfill. Result - scarcity. Supply and demand in action.
I’ve got a bag of a couple hundred Anderson buttons from 1980 buried in a box at home, courtesy of my volunteer work in his campaign. That was 36 years ago, and they might be worth >$1000 if sold individually, which isn’t worth my trouble to do. Sold as a single lot, a few hundred, max, is what I’m guessing.
Now that’s funny.
My favorite headline was “What We Learned from the Primaries”. Apparently, not a lot.
And then she lost because of middle-aged white men.
And the ad where Newsweek is going to tell us about the Bible. That’s credible, for sure. :eek:
Comedy gold - thanks, BRBS-BS
Regards,
Shodan