This rare Hubert Humphrey pin brought $2,100 at auction last week.
For collectors, common sense can sometimes be fleeting. Quite fleeting.
Take last week’s Anderson Americana political collectibles Internet and mail auction out of Troy, Ohio, for example. A very simple green and black pin tying Hubert Humphrey and Lyndon Johnson together fetched a pretty unbelievable $2,100. (That’s not a typo.)
While there are Humphrey collectors out there, he’s certainly not considered one of the upper-echelon candidates among collectors. He’s no Roosevelt, Lincoln or Kennedy, certainly. That’s not a shot, it’s just reality.
But this quite rare pin, no matter how simple in design, was one that a few folks apparently needed to have for their collections. As one other collector put it, it would be hard to pay $15 for this pin at a show if you didn’t know how rare it was.
One of the biggest Hubert Humphrey collectors in the country said he only knows of three examples of the pin. Was it a sample, or a staff pin made in limited quantity? It’s hard to say.
Common sense might have been fleeting for some bidders, but it’s certainly a Humphrey pin that demands some respect.
