In 1920, it seemed obvious to many political observers that Ohio Governor James M. Cox would not beat Warren G. Harding in the presidential election. The people had had enough of democracy and they would vote Republican. Nevertheless, a campaign had to be carried out, which meant among other things that buttons with pictures of both the presidential and vice presidential candidates would be produced for distribution. That was another thing the Democrats didn’t do so well, as it was hard to find usable photos of vice president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and the campaign didn’t start producing these buttons until it was too late. As a result, only about 100 of these buttons—called “jugates” because of their intricate images—were produced.
Most of these buttons probably wouldn’t have swayed the outcome of an election, but the rarity of these one-and-a-quarter inch round buttons has made them very valuable to collectors of American politics. In 2022, one was sold at Hake’s Auctions in York, Pennsylvania for $185,850. “There are many collectors of sets of these buttons, going back to when 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, director of Hake America, told the Observer.
Americana is a very broad category, covering almost anything produced in the country for 400 years or more. It may include traditional crafts: handmade items such as weather hats, quilts, whirligigs and carved decoys; political and historical monuments; flags; Civil War daguerreotypes; Revolutionary War powder horns and muskets; historical manuscripts; furniture; and creative posters for advertising and pop culture. “Someone recently sent me a ticket to the last Beatles concert in America, August 12, 1966,” said Mussell. The average for that shipment will be $1,000-2,000.
Americana is in a class by itself. There is no Germania or Britannia, for example, or any other foreign equivalent. When asked by the Observer to define Americana, the heads of Americana departments at auction houses were often confused and resorted to describing the specific types of items they put up for sale. Erik Gronning, Sotheby’s senior consultant in charge of American furniture, folk art and Americana, said “there are two categories—’books and manuscripts, and everything else.'” As a sales category, it’s a broad mix of things that are (usually) handmade or hand-written but (usually) not good. That explanation is not entirely tenable, as those Cox-Roosevelt buttons were produced by machines and the painted images are often sold at Americana auctions.
There are buyers devoted exclusively to this so-called Americana, but Julia Jones, head of Americana sales at Christie’s, noted that some of the collectors she has worked with are interested in contemporary art and see a connection to the work of indigenous artists. Some buyers create a period room in their contemporary homes, adding antique furniture and other decorative arts that fall into the Americana category. Earlier this year, Christie’s sold a portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart whose original owner was James Madison. Otherwise, Stuart is an artist whose works are sold at American art sales, but “this is an iconic image of America. The image we see on the one dollar bill.” It’s not just a work of art but a “unique expression of American heritage,” he said at the Americana auction.
Americana knows nothing about politics. Hake’s latest online auction featured a ceramic plate with an anti-slavery image, but the auction house also sold mocking Jim Crow-era images of African Americans on plates and other items. It is not a matter of fairness on both sides; it’s all in America.
Because most Americana consists of items from the past—colonial America—to a non-past era, buyers tend to be history buffs. “Most of them are novice historians, but some are real teachers who want to buy things to show in their classrooms,” David Lindeman, manager of Anderson Americana in Ohio, told the Observer. Anderson Americana also has the opportunity to sell Cox-Roosevelt jugates, one for $42,900 in 2006 and another for $35,000 in 2022. For some buyers, the history they want is theirs, notes Lindeman. “We have Vietnam veterans and people who were part of SDS. They’re still angry, but they both buy from us.”
One would have to be a dedicated person in the Civil War to pay $281,000 in 2022 to find more than a thousand documents in six boxes that include the archives of Gideon Welles, the secretary of the Navy under Abraham Lincoln, or $27,500 in 2020 for the diary of a cavalry officer who protects more than 5 immigrants in Swawan in Swat. The gallery, a New York City auction house that works primarily with prints and has maintained sales dedicated to Americana since 1942. Rick Stattler, head of Swann’s Americana department, told the Observer that most of the tenders and buyers are from the US, as one might expect, “but we also have buyers from overseas, from Europe and Asia. There are people from the American subculture of Indian France in American France and Indian France.
Devoted viewers of the History Channel’s American Pickers might think that interest in Americana is primarily a rural fascination, as the show’s hosts spend their time exploring barns and outbuildings to find things they like. But “it’s more about where the stuff is going than where it’s going,” says Caroline Tamposi, director of Americana and political memorabilia at Heritage Auctions, a Dallas, Texas-based house that holds more than half a dozen Americana sales every year. The highest percentage of consumers live in cities in California, New York and Texas—”places where they have a lot of money.”
Tamposi acknowledged that many, if not most, of the buyers are history buffs, and “a few are lawyers and doctors, sometimes people with old Texas oil money,” as some lots can be very expensive. Museums and educational institutions also bid for items to add to their collections. Occupying a space between curiosities and history, Gugu’s latest sale includes miniature joint portraits of George and Martha Washington, created in 1857, atop sealed envelopes containing actual locks of their hair. An 1869 letter from General George Custer to his wife, Elizabeth “Libbie” Custer, written a little more than a month after the Washita War, sold last February at Heritage for $550,000. In this 21-page book, Custer describes the end of the winter campaign on the southern plains, his role in council with the leaders of the Plains tribes, his handling of the captive Kiowa chiefs Sataneta and Lone Wolf and his growing reputation as an “Indian warrior.” Items that seem to tell a story at an important point in American history—especially items from the Revolutionary or Civil Wars—are highly sought after, but items from shipwrecks (coins, tableware, jewelry) or the Wild West (Annie Oakley’s gauntlet gloves or a diary from Billy the Kid’s henchman, Tamposi) are also popular, Tamposi said.
The Americana scene ranges from pop culture collectibles to fine art, and the prices follow suit. One of the most expensive items ever sold at Sotheby’s Americana sale was a tea table, possibly made in 1765 by Newport, Rhode Island, cabinet maker John Goddard, which sold to a private collector in 2005 for $8.4 million. “It’s useful,” Gronning said, “but it’s also a sculpture of reality.”
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