Salt Lake businessman Gregg Chamberlain has been making buttons for campaigns for years. Last year he donated 3,000 to Ralph Becker's mayoral bid. Most candidates do order more stickers, he admitted. Even in large orders, buttons are still a lot more expensive than stickers costing 13 cents to produce.

Even if they hadn't been donated, the Becker campaign would have used some buttons, said David Everitt, Becker's campaign manager and current chief of staff.

"Nothing beats them for durability. Besides, they're links to campaigns of the past. What marks a campaign is its buttons," he said.

The fervor with which supporters wear a campaign button is what determines its success, he added. He said he was pleased to see Becker buttons in a variety of settings from early on, including on dog collars.

At the national level, most candidates have an authorized vendor of merchandise so they can control their image, but they never see a dime of the proceeds. Campaign merchandise has become big money — if one can reach the right market on time. People make a living following candidates around hawking buttons and other items to supporters, Wade said.

According to an article on campaign buttons in The Contemporary Review from 2000, the stickers that are in vogue now have been used since their debut in the 1952 election. Once again, it was Nixon who helped them catch on by producing 9 million buttons.

Before modern campaign finance restrictions were implemented, candidates often accepted unrecorded donations, said Tim Chambless, professor of political science at the University of Utah. Nixon often received money in "brown paper bags," making his war chest deep and untraceable. Consequently, Nixon was able to spend millions on things like buttons and stickers — especially in 1972.

"He really pushed the limits," Chambless said.

Television ads debuted in 1952, ratcheting up the price of campaigns. Before television, objects like buttons were a favorite method for spreading a message.

According to an article by Wade on About.com, the first and most famous use of memorabilia was the "log cabin campaign" of William Henry Harrison in 1840. The idea of a candidate being born in a log cabin (although untrue) was so popular that someone loaded a cabin onto a train car and carried it around with the candidate as a prop. The image became so connected with Harrison that all kinds of objects, including primitive buttons, were produced with a picture of a log cabin to promote the campaign. They were so prevalent that collectors can still find many today — almost 170 years later.