Business Finance Media Technology Policy Wealth Insights Interviews

Art Art Fairs Art Market Art Reviews Auctions Galleries Museums Interviews

Lifestyle Nightlife & Dining Style Travel Interviews

Power Lists Nightlife & Dining Art A.I. PR

About About Observer Advertise With Us Reprints

Why Americana Is the Only Collecting Category of Its Kind

Spanning folk art, political memorabilia, portraits, historical manuscripts and decorative objects, the category attracts buyers searching for different pieces of the same story.

In 1920, it seemed clear to most political observers that Ohio Governor James M. Cox was not going to beat Warren G. Harding in the presidential election. People had had enough of Democrats and were going to vote Republican. Still, a campaign had to be waged, which meant among other things producing buttons with pictures of both presidential and vice-presidential candidates to hand out. That was another thing the Democrats didn’t do so well, since it was difficult to find usable photographs of vice-presidential candidate Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and the campaign didn’t begin producing these buttons until almost too late. As a result, only around 100 of these buttons—called “jugates” due to their side-by-side portraits—were ever produced.

Sign Up For Our Daily Newsletter

Thank you for signing up!

By clicking submit, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge we may use your information to send you emails, product samples, and promotions on this website and other properties. You can opt out anytime.

More of these buttons probably would not have swayed the election’s outcome, but the scarcity of these particular one-and-a-quarter-inch round buttons has given them great value for collectors of political Americana. In 2022, one was auctioned at Hake’s Auctions in York, Pennsylvania for $185,850. “There are a lot of collectors of sets of these buttons, going back as far as these campaign buttons were produced, and the Cox-Roosevelt jugate is the rarest of them, which is why the price was so high,” Scott Mussell, Hake’s American director, told Observer.

Americana is an extremely wide category, encompassing almost anything produced in the country over the past 400-plus years. It may include folk art: hand-crafted items like weather vanes, quilts, whirligigs and carved decoys; political and historical memorabilia; flags; Civil War daguerreotypes; Revolutionary War powder horns and muskets;........

© Observer