Philadelphia is readying itself for the state primary, on April 22, and Obama’s campaign headquarters is bustling and crowded, a study in organized chaos. It’s also running out of buttons. Volunteers dole them out stingily, asking for a donation first. At the similarly cleaned-out Clinton central, a staffer rummages through his desk to unearth a sole button, then offers to rip a poster off the wall.   

Official swag in short supply during a dramatic campaign year is surely frustrating for supporters. But for collectors of campaign memorabilia, it’s not a big deal. They know that there’s a lot more to be had than the standard-issue red-white-and-blue material that comes from campaign offices.

These days, it’s groups like labor unions, nonprofits, and local political organizations that produce the greatest diversity and bulk of buttons (and other commemorative objects). And it’s these buttons that ultimately become collectible, according to Brian Krapf, president of the 3,000-member American Political Items Collectors.

“There’s a greater variety out there, which means there’s a lot less of any one kind,” he says. “You can still pick up an official 1992 Bill Clinton pin for a dollar or two. But those made for special-interest groups, like the supporters who called themselves the Arkansas Travelers and crisscrossed the country following the Clinton-Gore bus, can go for several hundred bucks apiece.”

As in all things, he says, “quantity determines rarity, and that drives value.”

The booster button as the product of supporters, not campaigns, is rooted in history. In fact, the concept was created by an admirer of George Washington’s, who manufactured and sold brass coat buttons to celebrate the nation’s first inauguration. This March, Heritage Auction Galleries in Dallas sold one that proclaims “Long Live the President GW” for $7,170. (Other, rarer Washington buttons can fetch triple that amount.)

By the mid-1800s, opposing political parties began concerted efforts to produce their own materials and slogans. Jordan Wright, a political-memorabilia collector and author of the new book Campaigning for President, points out that a wide variety of nonbutton goods soon became available. “The whole idea of campaign memorabilia is to get people to remember the candidates,” he says. “The more colorful and the more strange, the better.”

These 3-D items, as collectors call them, are most valued as cultural references of their time. In the Victorian era, parasols and oil lamps bore candidates’ images. Occasionally they appear in Americana auctions, and Heritage recently sold a glass President William McKinley lamp for $3,346. In the 1960s, Warhol-esque six-packs of Senator Barry Goldwater, the Republican presidential nominee in the 1964 election, were all the rage; they’re currently available on the internet for about $60.

Television changed everything, says Harry Rubenstein, a curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. “Now the campaigns will produce a T-shirt, a button or two, and a ‘Change’ poster, but that’s it,” Rubenstein observes dryly. “They’d rather put their money behind large messages in the media. They’ve ceded a lot of the fun stuff to others.”

Button vendors like New York–based Bold Concepts pick up the slack, with items like a popular 1996 pin on which Hillary “Rodman” Clinton sports the fiery red buzz cut of N.B.A.-star Dennis Rodman. (Its fame was fleeting: It went for as much as $75 during President Bill Clinton’s reelection campaign but now pops up online for $10.) This year, company owner Mort Berkowitz says he expects to design 1,800 different buttons, a record for the firm. They’ll be sold at rallies and fundraisers, sometimes just to commemorate a candidate’s quick whistle-stop appearance.

Vendors also produce all manner of 3-D items, as in the old days. During the current campaign, Wright has added a Hillary Clinton piggy bank ($40); a Rudy Giuliani baby onesie ($20); and a Governor Bill Richardson thong (priceless) to his cache. But no one can predict whether these novelties or other contemporary grassroots entries like the St. Patrick’s Day “O’Bama” poster, countless YouTube videos, and limited-edition, artist-created T-shirts will ever obtain real value. “Buttons are what have staying power,” posits Berkowitz, who’s also an avid collector. “They’re what you think of when you think of campaign memorabilia.”

As for whether items associated with Clinton or Obama—each running a historic candidacy—will ultimately become more collectible, Berkowitz says, “the winner is always the one to have.” And the values of memorabilia related to earlier phases of the winner’s career increases. Buttons from Harry Truman’s 1922 Jackson County, Missouri, judicial run go for $100, Berkowitz notes, adding, “If Obama wins, and you come across a pin from when he was running for state senator, grab it.”

Sometimes, though, it’s the losers’ trinkets that provide sweet solace for collectors, since fewer people bother stowing them away. Buttons featuring James Cox or John Davis—who lost, respectively, to Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge during the 1920s—can fetch about $75,000, according to A.P.I.C.’s Krapf.

In addition to losers, “third-party candidates are hugely popular among collectors,” says Wright. “Communist, Socialist, Prohibition, Libertarian—people love Libertarians, actually.”

Now, where did that Ron Paul button get to?