I have to be honest with you. My heart skipped a beat when I received my box marked FRAGILE from the auction house, with it arriving on my doorstep partially smushed. But, I also know this is filled with political pins and styrofoam popcorn. They usually travel well, even when UPS plops a set of weights or a mail order kitchenaid mixer on my box.
It only cost me an arm and a leg.. but the collection of over 450 South Dakota political pins are here, and there are several I don’t have.
Here’s just a sampling:
That Egan pin is a new one, and those A.E. Lee pins are tough.
McCarter, Norbeck, Knappen are all new.. and a lot of great duplicates on others.
I’ve only seen that Mellette Commemorative pin in photos. That Janklow Schoenbeck pin is fun as well.
Here’s a group of tough pins. I’ve got the A. B. Kittridge pins, Crawford, but Ed S Johnson for Senate, and USG Cherry are all tough pins to find. Burke First is a vast improvement over my copy. I’ve never seen that Sterling pin. Not sure I have that Murphy pin, either.
And then we get to the reason I shelled out what I did. The holy grail. The impossible to find 1933 Inaugural pin.
I finally have it after 35 years, (and the more common Kneip pin I was missing), completing my set.
I’ll have to go through them in the coming weeks, and figure out what’s extra. But for those of us who collect these things, they are a reminder of our state’s history encapsulated in tin, paper and plastic helping to remind us of those political figures who shaped a sparsely populated territory into the state we know today as South Dakota.
Very Nice!