Value vs Price
BIT OF HISTORY A collectible badge, collecting journalists, and FDR speaks
Note from Annette
Today's a Bit of History post, in which I riff on a random historical thingy from my collection: In case you haven't guessed, that's it in the photo.
Coming across this badge from FDR’s 1937 inauguration reminded me of my favorite president (sorry, conservative friends, but love you anyway, stay with me). It also reminded of the California journalist who gave it to me. Thanks to my historian/journo brain, that in turn led me to think about local journalism, and why it matters. Anyway. All that's in here.
But first . . .
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Not A Proper Collector
I'm a historian who loves survivals from the past, but I’m not a collector, as I’ve long tried to make clear here at Non-Boring History.
I'm not organized. I'm not obsessive. I just gather up stuff to which I take a shine, and squirrel it away. I learned I wasn’t a proper collector long ago, back in my 18th century British childhood. That's when I presented my eclectic stamp collection to my Brownie pack leader in England. She, like all in her position, was known as Brown Owl.
I expected to get a coveted Brownie badge for my uniform. Instead, I got a telling off from Brown Owl. My stamp album wasn’t properly organized, she told me crossly.
How was that, then? I mean, I had all the stamps standing to attention on the correct country pages, attached with those fiddly paper hinge thingies. Was I supposed to have put them in order of color? Arrival? Stage of decrepitude? Miserable old cow, I thought.
Actually, no, “miserable old cow” is what I think now. At the time, I was eight or maybe nine, and I was just terribly embarrassed to have flunked the badge test. I then lost my interest in stamp collecting, and my interest in the Brownies.
Ever since, my collections, if you can call them that, have been proudly amateur-hour, defying labeling, and any need for actual knowledge on my part. Result? Nobody can call me a connoisseur of anything. Fine with me! I’m more like a magpie. I like pretty shiny historical things, and they are very seldom worth more than a few bucks. Like, literally five dollars.
Proper Collectors
John Stanton was different. He was a proper collector. John was a journo in Sacramento, California, in the early 80s, and he was the political reporter for the Peninsula Times Tribune newspaper, in Palo Alto, in what was just starting to be called Silicon Valley.
As well as reporting on California politics, Stanton wrote a popular column for his newspaper. I once met a posh American lady from Palo Alto on the platform at Kings Cross railway station in London who was a fan of his. My reward for knowing John was an invitation for tea in Cadogan Square (ooh, posh!) which I happily accepted.
John looked like a myopic Amishman, with thick glasses and a curtain beard, and he sounded (by his own admission) very much like Kermit the Frog. He and his wife and kids lived in Sacramento, since he reported on California politics, and the capital of California is not (surprise!) San Francisco or Los Angeles. No, it's shabby, boring old Sacramento, the city dear to my heart, my love of which was inexplicable until Greta Gerwig came along and made the movie Lady Bird, when I learned that I had good company in my Sacramento adoration.
John Stanton was a collector, and what he collected were political buttons—or, as we call them in the UK, badges, mostly from California state campaigns, or national campaigns involving California figures.
And John had these badges by the thousands, stored in special frames, row upon row nestled in a soft cottony material at back to protect them behind plexiglass (UK Perspex). Some frames were hung proudly on the walls in John’s study, and he loved to show them off, talking about favorite buttons, favorite politicians (from a reporter’s perspective, not necessarily those for whom he voted) and favorite campaigns.
Once, he invited sixteen-year-old me, recently arrived in the US, to accompany him to a local political button collectors’ meeting in Sacramento. I don’t remember much: Shabby folding tables covered in those same collectors’ frames, an overwhelming variety of buttons by the thousands, with faces ranging from Woodrow Wilson to Nixon to Reagan (his buttons were new then, and so not of such interest).
The button collectors greeted each other as old friends, because they were, with the camaraderie of people who share an unusual common interest and a friendly rivalry. Most were men, but the few women present were greeted just as warmly as knowledgeable members of the club.
Soon, as America and Britain turned from being countries in which people with interests were respected as learned, to a culture of wealth and celebrity as the highest human achievements, these people would be dismissed as nerds (US) or anoraks (UK). But not yet.
Two things I remember in particular from that day: I learned that Cox-Roosevelt buttons, from FDR’s first run at national office in 1920, were the most valuable political buttons ever. I might have seen one that day— I can’t recall for sure—but since I remember this fact, maybe I did? Nah, probably not.) Anyway, FDR, running for US Vice-President with James M. Cox running as President . . . lost. This must be one of the few times when the badges of losing candidates are considered valuable.
How much are Cox-Roosevelt buttons worth now? In 2023, a one-inch Cox-Roosevelt button sold at auction for $100,000. The year before, a slightly larger button from the same campaign sold for $185,850. I have no clue what they were going for in the early 80s, but I am certain that, even then, given FDR’s popularity, they were beyond my budget and—honestly—I would not have given one a good home.
But price is overrated as a measure of value. Whoever could pay those kinds of prices for a Cox-Roosevelt button, I imagine, is on a quest to make the money he’s accumulated mean something to him. I often think of a quote from Beatle George Harrison, who had become so rich, so young. He felt he’d missed out on the battle of life. Now, the rest of us might have argued with him on that point, but when he talked, in a very bored way, how he could just buy a house with a signature, we can, if we really, really, really try, see his point.
But then I hear the voice of Hattie McDaniel, the first black Oscar winner: “I'd rather play a maid than be one,” she responded when the NAACP and others criticized her for accepting roles that fed into stereotypes about black women. Someone else said something like “I've been poor, and I've been rich, and I prefer rich.”
Wealth in the money sense was not a thing among the political button collectors I met in Sacramento. Most I met were proud and passionate journalists, and nobody went into print journalism to become rich and famous. It was and is a vocation, something you’re called to do, like a monk or nun, only not.
I didn't know most of California's politicians (except Nixon and Reagan) but John Stanton, knowing my interest in FDR, kindly bought me an affordable FDR button, the one at the top of this post. And it wasn't the cheapest thing in the room.
Even then, the ribbon was thin and fragile. I haven’t always been able to find it at a moment’s notice, but I have kept it in the same see-through envelope in which it was presented to me for the past forty-three years. It’s a miracle, I tell you: it has traveled around the US with me, and has crossed the Atlantic (and come back), and I’ve somehow managed not to destroy it. Take that, Brown Owl!
And just to show my proper collector cred (actually, this is the highlight of my miniscule collection of political badges), I’m going to put a bit of historical context around it.
Four Years Earlier: The First FDR Inauguration. 1933
My button is from FDR’s second inauguration, in 1937. That’s NOT the 1933 inauguration in which a newly-elected FDR famously told the crowd, after the worst year of the Great Depression, that “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself . . . Nameless unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needless efforts to convert retreat into advance” . . . You can hear that 1933 speech here. Or you can read it from the transcript at the same link. I do suggest listening to FDR’s voice giving the speech, even just a little.
Honestly, “fear itself” is not my current favorite line in that 1933 inaugural speech. At this moment, my attention is drawn to a paragraph that matches the final part of my post to an uncanny extent . . . (calling
) I swear, this wasn’t planned. I just started reading the whole speech, and there it was. Let me quote. I get that we can’t cope with such long sentences now, but yes, it's worth re-reading and breaking it down to understand:Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit
And there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing.
Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.
Wait, do I hear the creak of an ancient wooden wheelchair behind me?
FDR (for it is he) Good morning, Dr. Laing. I see you finally read the whole speech. Congratulations. Very few do.
ANNETTE Thank you, Mr. President. Hey, please put out the cigarette. You know, if we put your speech in modern language, I'm pretty sure it would be a hit today. Look, have you given consideration to running for re-election? I mean, we’d have to change the law limiting presidents to two terms that was passed after you were elected four times, but . . .
FDR Dr. Laing, you forget that I am now 142 years old.
ANNETTE Oh, no worries. That’s not much older than the two main candidates running.
FDR exhales a cloud of smoke while he thinks about this.
FDR And I’m dead.
ANNETTE Yeah, ok, true, but, again, that might not be the disqualifier you think it is, sir.
But FDR, with a smile, is shaking his head. He abruptly spins himself around, and vanishes.
And 1937
My badge has one of those crazy pins that lacks a clasp, which is why I’ve been stuck by it a couple of times. I suppose it was safe enough even pinned firmly in the thick lapel of a wool coat on that January morning in Washington in 1937, but safety pins on the back of buttons were already a thing, so I have no idea why it was designed like this. Maybe to be attached to something so thick, it defied using a clasp, like that coat, or a hat?
The ribbon attached to my button is thin, and that’s hardly a surprise when it’s (does math . . .) 87 years old. I’m guessing it’s silk, but none of the collectors’ listings speculates about the ribbon, so that’s just a guess. I don’t see signs of water damage, which is good, because the 1937 inauguration was definitely rained on: All morning, and all through the inauguration, and then the crowds fled.
I doubt that 1937 crowd was listening much, because it was pouring down. Check out the audio of the inauguration. You can hear the rain as clearly as you can hear FDR, which is surprisingly well. But you can read FDR’s speech from a transcript if you prefer.
In November, 1936, just a couple of months plus before the inauguration, FDR had won re-election in the greatest landslide in American history.* The vote was a massive thumbs up to his massive New Deal reform program.
*I get that this delay confuses Brits. As soon as you’re done voting, a moving van rolls up outside No. 10 Downing Street. Here, there’s an agonizing wait until the new President takes over after the inauguration.
If you're not familiar with the New Deal, or even if you are, you’ll be amazed by how much of it is still with us:
So, with the successes of the New Deal wowing Americans, FDR’s 1937 speech was pretty much on the theme of “Haven’t we done well? But let’s keep changing things, because, boy, life still sucks for tens of millions of Americans.” Or, as he put it:
Let us ask again: Have we reached the goal of our vision of that fourth day of March, 1933? Have we found our happy valley?
I see a great nation, upon a great continent, blessed with a great wealth of natural resources. Its hundred and thirty million people are at peace among themselves; they are making their country a good neighbor among the nations.
I see a United States which can demonstrate that, under democratic methods of government, national wealth can be translated into a spreading volume of human comforts hitherto unknown, and the lowest standard of living can be raised far above the level of mere subsistence.
But here is the challenge to our democracy: In this nation I see tens of millions of its citizens—a substantial part of its whole population—who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life.
I see millions of families trying to live on incomes so meager that the pall of family disaster hangs over them day by day.
I see millions whose daily lives in city and on farm continue under conditions labeled indecent by a so-called polite society half a century ago.
I see millions denied education, recreation, and the opportunity to better their lot and the lot of their children.
I see millions lacking the means to buy the products of farm and factory and by their poverty denying work and productiveness to many other millions.
I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.
It is not in despair that I paint you that picture. I paint it for you in hope—because the Nation, seeing and understanding the injustice in it, proposes to paint it out.
My badge sits quietly on my desk. It’s listening to these words, I reckon, just as it did nearly ninety years ago, when it heard them from FDR’s lips on that rainy day in Washington, DC.
Inaugurations
It’s obvious I never attended FDR’s inauguration, but less obvious that I’ve never been to any US presidential inauguration. I came closest on January 20, 1993, when I was staying in Williamsburg, VA, not too far from Washington, DC, as the graduate teaching assistant to a University of California system group of undergrads come to study early American history at the College of William and Mary, and public history at Colonial Williamsburg.
Several of the students, Republicans as well as Democrats, took the train to Bill Clinton’s inauguration. But I declined the opportunity to attend the moment I learned—shocked— that we would be packed like sardines, with no loos readily available—I have a very British terror of such situations.
I have no idea what provision was made for the crowd at FDR’s inauguration in 1937, including the original owner of my button. I don’t know if he—or she—even wore the button, or if it was bought on the way home, or stashed away in a bag without being worn. I like to think it was worn, but hey, there’s no way of knowing, because the badge and its original owner long ago parted company.
I can say that there’s one thing that the button owner and most of the crowd likely would not have known. Within two weeks of the inauguration, FDR, encouraged by his victory, announced a shocking plan. He would to overcome the Supreme Court conservatives who had obstructed several of his key New Deal programs, by drowning them out. He would appoint additional justices to the court to outvote them.
But this was a step too far for many Americans, and despite FDR’s effort to drum up the public’s support on one of his wildly popular radio broadcasts, a Fireside Chat, as he called it, he lost the battle.
Still, we could argue he won the war: His threat to pack the court may have been enough to put the wind up at least one key member of the Supreme Court.
Whether for that reason or not, FDR’s administration got favorable Supreme Court decisions on the Social Security Act (old age pensions, unemployment payments, etc), the minimum wage, and the National Labor Relations Act (aka the Wagner Act, which gave employees the right to organize in unions).
By then, I imagine, my badge, having done its only job, was lying in a drawer, perhaps in a sideboard fragrant with cedar, listening to the jokes of Jack Benny played on the radio, or perhaps the broadcast of another, very different, ceremony in May, in faraway London, when Prince Albert and his wife Elizabeth came to the throne as King George VI and Queen Elizabeth.
They were the parents of the late Queen Elizabeth II, and theirs was the first coronation broadcast in British history. Wait, was it heard in the United States? Not on radio, I don’t think. Curses. But, either way, modern media like radio and movie newsreels introduced the British royal family to Americans like nothing else.
Within two years, with Britain on the verge of a global fight for its national life, the King and Queen made their inaugural visit as the first British royals to visit the United States, where they were hosted by the man on my badge.
Memories
John L. Stanton’s collection of political buttons and campaign memorabilia is now held at the California State Library, in Sacramento, and you can make an appointment to see it. You can also download a copy of the Library’s magazine from 2009, the year he donated his buttons, to see examples from his collection, and read more about John. He started collecting political buttons in 1948, when he was ten years old. I didn’t know that.
If you’re interested in learning more about collecting political buttons and attending a meet, check out APIC (American Political Items Collectors). They hold an annual convention, and details are on the site. You can also contact them for details on meetings closer to you, and I’m sure they will welcome your interest. To my surprise, I recognized one name among the officers in 2024: Adam Gottlieb, whom I met briefly when he was a young reporter to whom John Stanton introduced me.
EBay tells me my FDR badge might be worth $75. A collectibles site says $45 is closer to the mark. Whatever. A price is not a value. My badge’s value is as a touchstone, a memory, a souvenir of FDR, and, for me at least, a very happy time in my life.
Their Fate (and ours) Is In Our Hands
Professional journalists like John Stanton who care about their craft, their subjects, and their communities still exist.
As local newspapers trim to the bone and then fold, these journalists need our support more than ever, and yes, especially in an age in which we have become careless consumers of words. Professional writing, research, and reporting is not a hobby, and cannot survive as a side gig. Look, I just witnessed the best local investigative journalist I've seen emerge in years become a PR flack for local government. I don't blame him, I assume he needs a real income to pay rent and eat, but that's terrifying.
Good journalists are many, and they are almost never rich and famous. That’s why, as readers, we need to stop with the cult of celebrity. Sure, Anchor McAnchorface is a household name, a familiar face, but his words are written by others, and to him, we’re “Who?” He doesn’t need our $5 when his net worth is in the millions. And he’s not working to save your town by exposing the corrupt mayor. Your local journos are heroes, and they need you. When I signed up for their newsletters to support, a couple of local journos (not even local to me) immediately became paying subscribers of mine. I have never, ever had that happen with a celebrity, although I’ve noticed some on my rolls.
We also need to differentiate between “I can’t afford to subscribe” and “I would rather spend the $5 on myself.” We’re entitled to spend on ourselves, of course. But unless you’re barely getting by on a fixed income or in financial difficulty yourself or already support lots of writers (in which case, this isn’t aimed at you) then I urge you to chip in to support an independent professional local reporter.
Supporting journos isn't charity: They're essential to a free society. Doesn't matter what your politics are: We need people who disregard party and ideology in pursuit of truth.
Just a few independent local journalists for your consideration:
in Iowa, and in California, in Illinois, and in Atlanta, Georgia. Nonnies and Substack writers, I welcome suggestions for this list, and by all means, journos, nominate yourselves.I’m on
’s list, and by an astonishing coincidence, while I was finishing up this post yesterday morning, I got his absolutely relevant post, about why supporting a local newspaper may not be the key to saving democracy: A for-profit newspaper is a business, often owned by people who only care so long as there’s a buck to be made. Many aren’t even owned locally anymore, for what it’s worth, but by investors looking to pick over the carcass for profit before shutting down the paper. These are the same people who bought your favorite casual eating diner chain to run it into the ground.The key for us as readers is to support the right local publication, or, I would argue, to focus on supporting the journos. Oh, and do read Bob’s post (below) so you know it’s not just me. I am not now and never was interested in being a cult leader.
Maybe it’s not coincidence that Bob and I are writing on similar lines? Bob knows a thing or two about the shabby conduct of the people who run things, as do I, as a voluntary (yet reluctant) refugee from academia. It irritates me when people respond with sad faces to posts like this. Journalists don’t need pity. They need reader-supporters who are righteously angry, on the journos’ behalf, and their own.
More and more journos, like academics, are ready to turn their critical eyes and pens on the institutions and charlatans who exploit them and run their institutions into the ground, for (to borrow from FDR) profit and personal place. The new people in charge, from newspapers to universities to school districts to aircraft manufacturers to the British corporation that calls itself The Post Office, often aren’t even that focused on power, just money and title. They want respect they didn’t earn and don’t deserve. Here’s Bob’s post (it’s free) below. Like it? Even if you live far from Davis, California, sign up for a chance to get to know another America:
