Less than a week to go to the 55th Presidential Inauguration and the memorabilia mania has begun. But this souvenir thing, it's a little like the cicadas. Every four years, a gazillion inaugural keepsakes pop up in hotel gift stores, shops and streetside vendors. They get a lot of buzz. Then, a day after the inauguration, they're gone.
"Folks come in here and spend $1,000 without saying much at all," says Tom Carrier, manager of Political Americana, a memorabilia shop three blocks from the White House. "Four years ago, it was the cuff links and inaugural medals."
Big sellers this year? Cuff links and inaugural medals, probably. "The Presidential Inaugural Committee looks at what the previous one did, whether it was the other party or not, and does the same thing," says Bob "Button Bob" Levine, a St. Louis button maker for 40 years.
About 40 percent of Political Americana's inaugural inventory is official mementos — the only souvenirs allowed to use the Inauguration Seal — $9 golf ball packs, $10 coffee mugs, $28 teddy bears, $28 sweat shirts, $30 paperweights, some three dozen items so far. The store has pricier official stuff, such as $95 silver cuff links, $225 silver medallion, and $1,190 gold medallion set.
Kay Gallota is shopping on her lunch break. She brushes past the $3 buttons and $8 T-shirts to examine the $60 set of old-fashioned "on-the-rocks" glasses. She wants something classy.
"I'm looking for something like money clips for the men and pins for the women," says the SunTrust marketing veep on a quest for inaugural-embossed gifts for colleagues helping her throw the bank's 1,000-guest Inauguration Day blowout.
Her guests will receive a surprise SunTrust-provided souvenir. Not official, but exclusive. Everything not sanctioned by the Inaugural Committee is unofficial.
A 'big pile of people' expected
Early next week, about 100 souvenir hawkers will materialize on the sidewalks near the parade route, selling unofficial merchandise. "It doesn't really start selling until a day or two before," says one longtime D.C. souvenir vendor on 15th Street who declined to be identified. She's not exactly overrun with customers this week. But wait until Inauguration Day, she solemnly swears, "there'll be a big pile of people here."
The "big piles" add up to big business for inaugural merchandisers. "It is a multimillion-dollar venture," says New York political souvenir maker Mort Berkowitz.
"Buttons will outsell everything 10 to 1," says Berkowitz, whose company, Bold Concepts, designed more than 600 buttons for the presidential campaign. "There will be a minimum of a half-million inaugural buttons sold."
As with potato chips, people can't get just one. In 1992, Berkowitz was commissioned by the Inaugural Committee to design the official Clinton buttons. "Next thing I know, QVC was selling a set of five of these buttons," he says, "and, in the course of five shows, devoting five minutes each show to the buttons, they sold 26,300 sets."
Brian Harlin's Elkridge company, GOPShoppe.com, was selected to be the Bush inauguration's "master vendor," in charge of dreaming up and licensing official products. Harlin says official souvenirs alone did $2.5 million in sales in Bush's first inauguration.
Traditionally, a second inauguration doesn't attract the same souvenir fervor, but Harlin figures this one will. Why? George W. Bush, he says. Harlin's a loyal Bush supporter — which is how he got the job.
Usually, one of the biggest sellers is the official inaugural license plate — $50 personalized, $35 numbered. But this year the plates can't be registered in the District and are decorative only. Another new bump in the road was the president's decision that official souvenirs must be made in the United States — which scratched from the lineup silver picture frames, almost always imported, and traditional Waterford commemoratives, made in Ireland.
Online souvenir retailer Chris Body, owner of Annapolis-based FreedomHQ.com, says, "We've seen things begin to jump in the past couple days." His Web site has sold about 200 of the $55 life-sized Bush cardboard stand-ups for inauguration parties.
The George W. Bush Online Store reports that its big seller is a hand-numbered, limited-edition Makers Mark Bourbon Seasoned cigar — $14 for three.—
Trying to please a 'feel-good crowd'
Toypresident Inc. spokesman Dwayne Crosby says his company has sold 30,000 of its $30 "collector-quality, limited-edition" talking Bush action figures, and Presidentpuppets.com sells a $40 Muppet-like Bush that articulates 25 Bushisms and bully pulpit pronouncements.
Cute. But party-poopers looking for really negative souvenirs can forget about it. "There's no market for it," says Berkowitz, adding that Democrats aren't coming and protesters don't have money. "The inauguration is positive. This is a feel-good crowd."
Some D.C. hotels and businesses are throwing souvenirs into their inauguration packages. The Sofitel Lafayette Square Hotel's $75,000 four-night package in the presidential suite includes perhaps this inauguration's most opulent keepsakes: sterling silver spurs engraved with an inaugural emblem, his-and-hers Lucchese alligator-skin cowboy boots, Rolex watches with "inaugural-themed inscriptions" and eight place settings replicating official White House china.
Patrons of the Four Seasons Hotel will go home with framed and signed 10-by-14-inch photographs of the U.S. Capitol decked in stars-and-stripes bunting, taken by commissioned photographer Jake McGuire.
For those who overparty, the Grooming Lounge, a D.C. men's styling salon, is offering a spa package that includes an engraved 2005 inauguration bucket that "serves the dual purpose of a champagne bucket and another use if you're not feeling so well the next day," says owner Mike Gilman.
Some of the best souvenirs in life are free, of course. What collectors call "ephemerals" — such as parade-route "no parking" signs printed with "Inauguration 2005" — often become the most sought-after inaugural memorabilia for collectors. "The number one collector's item is an inaugural police badge. I've seen old ones go for $500," says Levine. "Ninety-five percent of the police keep them because it was special to them."
National Public Radio political director Ken Rudin has been collecting political memorabilia for 38 years. His most bizarre inaugural keepsake is a ball snatched by another reporter, he says, from the Clinton's first dog, Buddy, at the White House.
And the napkin. "I was at the MTV inaugural ball in 1993, having a wonderful time, and in marches Warren Beatty and Annette Bening doing a conga dance," says Rudin, NPR's "Political Junkie" columnist. "At some point later in the evening, Beatty crumbled up a napkin and I kept it. ... Clearly, I need a life."
At the warehouse of Americana Resources, a political memorabilia company in Gaithersburg, co-owner Larry Krug questions how much shelf life inaugural souvenirs have. He drags out a large box of 200 to 300 Clinton inauguration buttons. He sells these buttons, whenever he can, for $2.50 each — "less than they sold for" that day in 1993.
"I picked those up at an auction a year or so afterward, buy them by the boxful for maybe $20," says Krug, media director of American Political Items Collectors, an organization of 2,500 members nationwide. "They are produced in such quantities that they are never going to be collected as an investment."
He has about 100 pocket-size guides for Nixon's '73 inauguration, a stack of invitations sent to major campaign contributors for the second Clinton inauguration, and a batch of Ronald Reagan photos from his inaugural parties — all tough sells.
"Some things you have a lifetime supply of," he says, and adds: "You can go down there next week and fill your bags with the stuff."
