There are a lot of weird ways to predict the winner of a presidential election. Some people do it based on candidate height. There's a soothsaying monkey known to make the right pick. There's even something called “the Redskins rule” which says the incumbent party will win if the Washington football team, now called the Commanders, win their final home game before the day of voting.
The American Political Items Collectors (APIC) is a group of historical memorabilia collectors who have their own unique predictor.
Some collectors and sellers of historical political campaign memorabilia think they know who the winner will be based on the sales of campaign pins ahead of the big day.
APIC is an organization of thousands of sellers and collectors of political memorabilia. The organization meets at conventions around the country to sell pins, posters, and a wide variety of other antiques related to political campaigns.
Last month, the group held it's annual convention at the MAPS Museum in Canton. APIC's Big Show attracts sellers and collectors from all over the country.
During election years, their conventions take on a special meaning.
As go the pins go the country?
Ken and Cathy Hosner are major players in the political button scene.
"I've been doing this for about 60 years. For example, in the past, there wasn't a button seller in the country that couldn't tell you that Bill Clinton was going to win in a landslide and that Barack Obama was going to win in a landslide," said Ken Hosner. "This year, I think a lot of people are going to be surprised."
The Hosners are big supporters of Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris, but they sell both Harris and Trump pins at shows and directly to organizations, and they're ready to make a call.
"I think that she [Harris] will win, and it'll be bigger than what the polls are showing and bigger than what many people are showing," said Ken Hosner.
Hosner said his pick is based on what he sees in the marketplace. The Hosners sell pins at the Centerville County Fair in southwest Michigan, a region that historically votes Republican, and says he normally sells as much as three times as many Republican pins as Democratic, but this year it was nearly the reverse.
"This year, the Democrats sold two and a half times what the Republicans sold, and I will fill up a board of several hundred pins, put it in the county headquarters and in the Democratic areas, and within two or three days, they're all gone — week after week after week, going back three months," said Hosner.
The Hosners, who come from the battleground state of Michigan, think the state is in the bag for Harris. And while they say they’ve seen muted excitement for their Trump buttons, when they announced the buttons were dropping down in price for a fire sale, nearby collectors swarmed on the board to scoop up the pins at a discount.
Outside of Michigan, other collectors and sellers said they are seeing a different trend play out.
Patrick Mara is a member of the Republican National Committee and a longtime collector. He agreed the pin sales theory could shed insight on the final results. But he was not seeing the kind of strong performance for Harris that the Hosners described.
Mara said button sales for Republican nominee and former president Donald Trump were still outpacing Harris sales at shows.
"Biden was horrific in terms of sales over the last couple of years. I mean, it was surprisingly so," said Mara. "I'd say Harris is selling a little bit, but just so people can have a Harris pin in their collection."
Mara added that Trump's pins outsell Harris despite there being what he perceives to be a stigma around openly supporting Trump in some parts of the country.
"It's kind of funny, a lot of people will pick up pins that are Trump pins and say, 'I'm buying this for my cousin' or 'I'm buying this for my uncle, I'm buying this for somebody at work,'" said Mara, "and I have to think to myself, do you tell the same thing to the pollster?"
Another collector at the show who is also Republican is Matt Dole. Dole said Trump pin sales have never wavered. And like Mara, he sees the election going Trump's way based on what he's seen at shows.
"I think when Harris came on, a lot of people created a lot of Harris stuff, and it was pretty popular," said Dole. "But what's interesting is Trump stuff has been sort of consistently popular really since 2016."
Dole is chair of the Licking County GOP in Ohio. He said he has seen an uptick in the popularity of political pins during this election cycle, and he was pleased by the passion being shown on the part of voters of both parties.
"We've probably sold a thousand buttons, which... four or eight or twelve years ago, there just wasn't any of that being done," said Dole. "So I think we're seeing a time where people are going back and being interested in wearing how they're going to vote."
David Foster is another seller who confirmed that outside the Hosners’ experience in Michigan, it’s been mostly Trump pins selling in other locations. But he’s also a bit skeptical that means Trump will win. He thinks some of that pin popularity is purely celebrity power.
"This year I have sold probably two-to-one Trump buttons. But I go back to most of that's probably because of his star ability," said Foster.
Mason St. Clair is a graduate student at Kent State University studying the history of political campaign items. He talked to sellers at the convention and had a different read than Mara and Dole.
"We have swing state residents here who are selling pins to headquarters, and they've all come back reporting that their Harris pins are selling out, outselling Trump pins or just selling like crazy out of headquarters — can't keep them in stock. So I think I think it's a good indicator," said St. Clair.
Not every collector is ready to make prognostications. Ted Hake is a giant in the field of collectibles who over 50 years ago wrote the book on political pins, called the Button Book.
"I don't think it's a real reliable predictor, to tell you the truth," said Hake.
Back in 2000, Hake said he did a media tour for eBay.
“And that was their question: Based on what was being sold on eBay. could you really make an educated guess? And again, not so much. It really it really comes down to six of one half, a dozen of the other,“ said Hake.
Stephen Kohnenkamp is a former Democratic councilman from New York, he also wouldn't make a call on the election, but not because he doesn't believe in the metric.
"I would say it's very close," said Kohnenkamp. "We've had four shows. Most of the shows were in New Jersey, one was in Pennsylvania and this one in Ohio. It's about even. It's crazy how close it is."
Larry Marple is a Teddy Roosevelt impersonator who attends the show every year. His desire to stay out of the political fray in "retirement" rules his take on the subject.
"I say what Mrs. Roosevelt advised me to: I'm much too wise a man to involve myself in modern politics," said Marple.
Overall, most campaign button and memorabilia sellers said the excitement gap currently favors former President Trump, though that’s certainly not uniform across the country.
It’s hard to tell from this sample who will be our next president, but there was no shortage of people with opinions based on their experience.
For their part, the Washington Commanders delivered good news for the Harris campaign when they won their final home game before November 5th… on a last-second hail mary.
