Collector pins down politics

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- No matter what the history books say about him, Warren G. Harding will be forever immortalized on a button the size of a fingernail.

The former U.S. president faded into the pages of history and has been best known for his connection with the Teapot Dome scandal of the 1920s.

But Mark Farnen possesses a distinct commemoration of the chief executive that he has grouped with buttons featuring other GOP presidential candidates.

"Not many people collect Harding, and not many people collect Bob Dole," said Farnen, who operates a marketing and public relations company in Columbia.

The Harding button is only one of the nearly 5,000 political buttons Farnen keeps at his home. The few dozen he plans to display soon at art shop A La Campagne only scratch the surface of his collection.

Farnen is in the process of gathering buttons to sell in the weeks leading up to the Fourth of July. Nina Furstenau, co-owner of the store, said the buttons are a fascinating look into the political past.

"We're interested in having Mark Farnen's buttons here because it's a very interesting collection, and it's across a broad spectrum of time and also across the spectrum of politics," she said. "And the buttons kind of all have a story.

"Anytime a vintage piece or antique has a story it becomes more interesting not just for us as a story but for buyers."

The vast collection includes ornate and colorful pins displaying images of political figures of the early 20th century and contemporary buttons featuring current White House contenders.

Farnen's passion for buttons began in Mexico, Mo., in the midst of the 1960 presidential contest between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. Farnen's father was a figure in the local Democratic Party, and he wanted his young son to ride a float in a parade.

In exchange for throwing buttons and bubble-gum cigars to the parade watchers, Farnen's father would provide Mark with a milkshake at a local Dairy Queen.

"So he did it -- at the end of the deal, he gave me this pin," Farnen said, pointing to a button of Kennedy. "And that's the very first pin I got."

Because Farnen's parents were active in politics, he continued to accumulate candidate buttons -- gathering about 2,000 by the time he was a senior in high school. The number grew when he started working for various Democratic Party causes and had to travel.

Those travels gave Farnen the opportunity to acquire Republicans buttons as well. Included in his collection is a giant button that screams "We Want Ike," which a woman wore when she alerted Dwight Eisenhower that he had received the Republican nomination for president.

Today, Farnen said, buttons are mass-produced and sometimes indistinguishable.

"The only time you see political pins is if they're made by a manufacturer and they intend to sell them," Farnen said. "Or the party buys a bunch as a fundraiser rather than as a thing that demonstrates support or tries to convince people. It's just a whole different approach to buttons these days."

But the keepsakes that encapsulate brief snippets of the politics of yesteryear can be valuable.

The holy grail of political buttons might be one featuring James Cox, Harding's electoral nemesis in the 1920 presidential election. Only 27 buttons exist of Cox pictured with future President Franklin Roosevelt, and each could fetch tens of thousands of dollars.

For Furstenau, there is value in the buttons that goes beyond money.

"They're a piece of Americana," she said. "And we love having anything in this shop that has that rich history behind it."