DALLAS (AP) - Hervey Priddy walked with two bags of presidential memorabilia, past a display case bearing his name at the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum, wearing a presidential tie featuring 44 presidents.
Even the buttons on the 68-year-old’s blazer were presidential - replicas of the ones made for George Washington’s inauguration.
The Dallas Morning News (https://bit.ly/2ju8Ebb ) reports one of the real buttons - from 1789, carved with Washington’s initials, designed with 13 links representing the 13 colonies, inscribed with the message “Long Live the President” - was in his bag.
“I’m the presidential freak,” Priddy said, sorting through his memorabilia.
Two days before President Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony, Priddy showcased inauguration medals from his presidential collection exhibit at the Bush Library.
The collection started in 1994 when Priddy was pursuing a master’s in history at Southern Methodist University. He had recently started collecting vintage presidential campaign pins after purchasing a handful at a New Orleans shop. It was his first taste of presidential campaign memorabilia, which led to his discovery of inauguration medals - oversized coins made of gold, silver, brass or bronze with side profiles of America’s presidents.
Priddy never knew inauguration medals existed. They were given to presidents after their inauguration ceremonies.
“And it’s not just native to the United States,” Priddy said. “They’ve been making medals like this since the Roman times to honor some event.”
Priddy learned that these medals officially began in 1901 at President William McKinley’s second inauguration. So in 1994, he set out to accomplish a lofty goal: Collect them all.
“And from McKinley on, I have every one,” Priddy said.
His favorites tell a story. Like his 1905 brass Theodore Roosevelt medal - then the largest of its time.
“If you know Teddy Roosevelt, he wanted to be the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral and the baby at every christening,” Priddy said. “He wasn’t happy with the standard-sized medal, which was a small one. He wanted his own. So he engaged the famous American sculptor, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, to do it.”
Roosevelt also enlisted a luxury jewelry company to cast the medal: Tiffany’s, which is inscribed on the rim.
Priddy is one of roughly 125 people in the world who acquired Roosevelt’s inauguration medal. But it’s not the rarest in the collection. That would be Warren G. Harding’s 1921 sterling silver inauguration medal. There are only six known in existence, and Priddy estimates that it’s worth about $20,000 to $30,000.
Inauguration medals aren’t the only presidential pieces he collects. He has vintage campaign posters, pins, inauguration ball invitations, buttons and more. He’s interested in unique pieces, like an inauguration program from 1897, with Lady Liberty printed on the cover and vibrant blues, yellows and reds still in near mint condition.
“The colors are beautiful,” Priddy said, gazing at the program. “This was actually used and somebody held this in their hand at the inauguration. And somehow, it’s lasted over 100 years.”
Priddy isn’t political. Instead, he sees his hobby as collecting history. He once worked as an investment banker in New York, then with the federal government in Washington, D.C., before discovering his passion for history. He received his master’s in history at SMU in 1999, then his doctorate at the University of Texas in Austin in 2013.
His home once swelled with this collection. Valuables hundreds of years old were tucked in boxes and stored in closets and rooms. In the early 2000s, Priddy’s wife suggested that he donate some of his collection to the DeGolyer Library at SMU, so Priddy donated his inaugural medals as well as other campaign memorabilia.
At the time, his donation was valued at roughly $100,000.
“The collection is important for what it tells us especially about the material culture of American political history - buttons, ribbons, posters, broadsides, photographs, souvenirs,” said Russell Martin, assistant dean for collections and director of the DeGolyer Library. “It ranges from George Washington’s presidency to the present day, and is helpful in giving students and other researchers a taste of the continuity and changes in our political life.”
“The object is to display it and share it with the people so they could see our history,” Priddy said. “I wanted to share that enthusiasm rather than keep it in drawers and closets and boxes where it wasn’t doing any good.”
The exhibit at the Bush Library on the SMU campus will be on display until Tuesday, Jan. 31. It features a collection of inauguration medals and other memorabilia, such as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s four inauguration medals, the rare Harding medal and the National Inauguration Ball invitation for Abraham Lincoln. After the exhibit’s run, the memorabilia will return to the DeGolyer, where the collection remains in safekeeping, not on display but available for research. Many of the 500-plus items have been digitized.
As for Priddy, he’s slowing down on the collection. Prices continue to soar since he first started this hobby more than 20 years ago. But there’s one medal he’s missing: Donald Trump’s.
The nation’s 45th president selected a Wisconsin company to make his inaugural medals, the same company that made inauguration medals for Barack Obama and George W. Bush.
Priddy will eventually get his hands on one. And when he does, it won’t stay in his possession.
“I’ll give it to the DeGolyer.”
___
Information from: The Dallas Morning News, https://www.dallasnews.com
Please read our comment policy before commenting.