Political Buttons and Exonumia*:
This is an interesting hobby for the history buffs. A good friend who has helped this company along is, himself, a collector of these items. And he has stories and insights for many of his political buttons, and a few political cartoons too. He uses a couple of Riker Mounts as a display case to show his newest buttons and a couple of others for his all-time favorite exonumia. And yet a few more for sort of a rotating collection. And he rotates this collection in and out of a Riker Drawer Case. He has enough buttons in his collection that he can often pull out a given candidate's buttons for an earlier campaign when the guy is trying to get himself elected to a newer -bigger- office.
As for my buddy, he knows more history -'ticularally American History- then I do -and that is saying something -if I do say so myslef.
*If I remember my Latin (Greek?), exo means 'outside (of)' and numia means 'money' so exonumia means "out'a money" I'm often more then a little short of cash, so I'm exonumic? Actually, dictionary.com suggests that exonumia means...
Items, such as tokens or medals that resemble money but are not intended to circulate as money.
Preservation:
First thing to remember about buttons is that they are printed or silkscreened of something. This means inks and paints, and this should ring alarm bells in a collector's mind. Bells that warn of fading and suggest some means of protecting his or her collection against the harmful effects of Light & Radiation. (READ IT -there will be a quiz.)
Otherwise, Political Buttons and the like are pretty stout little items. They are colorful, one sided, of a convenient size, and easy to protect & display.
For a small collection, one or more Riker mounts are fall-off-a-log easy.
You open it up, put your collection in, arrange it artfully, close it up, put it on the wall or an easel, and you are done. I almost takes longer to explain it than it does to do it. (But remember the bit about light & radiation from above before you hang it all in a bright sunny room.)
To take it up a notch, put your Riker-mounts in a Riker-frame before you put the on a wall.
As your collection grows, as is the nature of collection, you might consider a Museum-case to hold your Rikers. Then you can rotate mounts from the case to the wall as your fancy strikes you.
If none of my museum cases are big enough(!?!), consider a drawer Riker-mount drawer case.
Finally, if this don't get it, consider a Custom Drawer-case.
As a last note -an interesting little wrinkle about collecting political buttons- they lend themselves to various & logical categorization schema. So much so, in fact, that I use political buttons as an example in my article on Organizing a Collection. Read this is you have a large unwieldy collection, or -and this is important- if you have in your world a young collector struggling to come to grips with how the world and things in it come together. (I am a sometime / part time teacher -and I can't help giving reading assignments.)
Interesting Links:
Let me introduce you to Lori Ferber. She is an expert on the subject of the American Presidents and the collectable goodies that go along with. She also has rather a lot to say -on a subject near & dear to my heart- Protecting your Collection.
American Political Items Collectors is The National Organization of Political Hobbyists and Scholars.
The Token and Medal Society (TAMS) sort of straddles the worlds of political buttons and coins. Interesting site. They also have some good bits to help out teachers.
I can't quite figure out if the American Numismatic Association is commercial or not -but they have a lot of good stuff.
This is actually a political site, but Politics1 is a good site and it has a page or two on collecting political buttons.