It has seen better days, but I’ve been looking to restore this pin to my collection for over 20 years.
This ribbon badge featuring President Teddy Roosevelt for the delegates to the Minnehaha Republican State Convention in 1904 has been on my want list for a long, long time.
A number of years ago when I was living in Pierre as an entry-level employee at the Division of Insurance, and starting to have a bunch of kids, I had acquired this ribbon to go along with it’s mate, a near identical ribbon badge for the Democrat convention that year. And then life happened, as I found myself needing to pay some bills (replacing my minivan’s transmission if I recall) instead of occasionally admiring some pins stored in a cabinet. So I made a hot deal, selling it and my inaugural pin collection at the time. At the end of the day, it’s just stuff.
In the intervening years, the inaugural pins were easy to replace when I got back into collecting, but this one has been extremely elusive. It was made in very limited numbers for a specific event, so the rarity comes as no surprise.
Now, it’s not as nice as the one I used to own, with some light fraying of the material, and some foxing on the picture (light rust stains) but it’s still an outstanding and rare political piece, especially for South Dakota.
(I’ll continue to see if I can find a better one, but this takes the pressure off)