What's It Worth? Buttons once considered best way to advertise

Advertising and collectibles; words that go together like burgers and fries. In today’s What’s It Worth? we help a reader with just four small items she received as part of a much larger gift.

Q. A couple of years ago, my uncle gave me a small box filled with items like these I sent you photos of. There were maybe 200 things, almost all different, and they include pins and lapel badges and things like this Coca-Cola item. He lived in Seattle. Can you tell me something about these four items? The largest is the 1939 world’s fair pin. It is one-and-one quarter inches across. — Jean in Richland

A. What an interesting assortment. Some of these pieces are probably older than you might expect. The photos here show both advertising pieces and collectible items.

Let’s start with the oldest. Jean’s Little Pinkies pin is of celluloid, one of the first materials used to make items such as this. Little Pinkies was a comic strip, and a very early one. The characters were introduced to American readers in 1896.

That is only a year after the debut of The Yellow Kid, which is widely considered to be the first American newspaper comic. Little Pinkies pre-dates many other, more famous, comics. They came before Katzenjammer Kids, Buster Brown or Mutt and Jeff were launched.

The pins were made by the Whitehead and Hoag Company of Newark, N.J. Even though one of the patent dates on the pin’s back — 1894 — is earlier than the Little Pinkies first appearance, this is an authentic item. The 1894 date refers to the pin-making process itself, and not the characters depicted. There were 20 pins in all in this set and collectors could get them through a promotion put on by Pepsin Gum before the turn of the 20th century.

Whitehead and Hoag’s corporate history is an interesting one. The company was a major innovator in the field of novelty advertising. At one time, their catalog listed more than 5,000 different items.

But, the pinback button was king. The company said as much in an advertisement in the late 1890s; “The Button,” they wrote, “is without question the best advertising medium.”

And, they backed their claim with sales and production. Founded in 1892, Whitehead and Hoag quickly became the world’s largest maker of celluloid pinback buttons. In 1896 — in addition to the Little Pinkies buttons — the company was making buttons for the Brown and Williamson Tobacco Company. That contract called for production of 1 million buttons — per day!

While some of the Little Pinkies character pins are harder to find than others, they all are worth about $5 each.

The most valuable item here is the 1939 New York World’s Fair pin. We have seen at least two dozen styles of pins like this for that fair. They are all about the same size and almost every one depicts the fair’s signature structures — the Trylon and Perisphere.

The fair was so popular with visitors that it was extended into 1940. The second largest world’s fair ever held in America — the St. Louis Expo of 1904 was larger — the Flushing Meadows fair featured the first regular live TV broadcasts in New York City.

Interesting as it is, there were millions of these pinbacks sold, so this is worth only about $10 to $15.

The other two items are pencil toppers. They are something we don’t see much anymore; except as a collectible. The idea pre-dates the logo-carrying “specialty advertising” pens you can pick up free today at your barber, credit union, restaurant, casino or hotel.

It isn’t surprising this box of treasures came from someone in Seattle. One of these pencil toppers is from the Machinists and Aerospace Workers union. That organization was very big in the city and they represented many employees of Boeing Aircraft Company. Boeing signed their first contract with the group in 1936, when it was the “Machinists Union.” At one time, the Machinists boasted almost 1 million members nationwide.

This pencil topper dates to sometime during 1964 or after. That’s the year the union’s name was officially changed to include the word “areospace.”

Not of particularly high value, like the other items today, it would be fairly priced at retail in the $5 to $7 range.

The Coca-Cola pencil topper is worth about the same.

This story was originally published March 7, 2015 at 10:19 PM with the headline "What's It Worth? Buttons once considered best way to advertise."