'Obamabilia': From T-shirts to Bling, All Things Barack Are Flying off the Shelves

Obama hot sauce, pins and T-shirts. —Photos by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images (left, middle); Scott Olson/Getty Images (right).

Barack Obama’s face may not have launched a thousand ships, but his name and likeness have seemingly propelled the distribution and sales of a million different commemorative items.

In the midst of the most sobering economic downturn since the Great Depression, the hawking of all things Obama has purred along as a recession-proof cottage industry, one that raked in $200 million by November, according to the New York Times. And there’s no sign of things slowing down as the nation’s 44th president takes office.

“I’m selling a lot of Obama T-shirts, watches and baseball-style hats,” energetic street vendor Nathan Adderley observed in January, from his vantage point alongside a well-traveled Miami intersection. “The T-shirts are going like mad. And I’ve sold at least $1,000 worth of watches in about a month, and that’s at $25 a pop.”

In December, eBay moved more than 111,000 pieces of merchandise associated with Obama on its website. Not to be outdone, the Home Shopping Network has done eight one-hour Obama merchandise specials, and retail network QVC will trek to Washington for the inauguration in order to more effectively sell Obama paraphernalia.

Everybody’s cashing in on the “Obamabilia” craze, from broadcasters to street vendors to the Presidential Inaugural Committee.

A confluence of factors prompted Obama items to fly from shelves, kiosks and websites, says Marc. E. Babej, founding partner of Manhattan marketing strategy and consulting firm Reason Inc.

“It isn’t often that a president takes office during such a critical time of crisis,” Babej notes. “And it’s a first in the sense that you have an African American becoming president. So what you have is a heightened sense of importance that can then be parlayed into marketing sales pitches, and then memorabilia.”

Which explains why a stern-looking red, white and blue Obama can be found staring from a tin of sugar-free “Peppermints We Can Believe In.” Collectors and Obama backers have been snapping up items ranging from a kitschy T-shirt depicting Obama pulling back his shirt and tie to reveal the letter “O” (à la Superman), to an Alaska Mint fine gold medallion costing a cool $2,008.

The handsome smile of the former junior U.S. senator from Illinois even gleams from packaging labeled Obama Condoms, whose slogan is “Practice Safe Policy.”

As untoward as that may sound, Obama is far from the first chief executive to have his likeness turn up in some rather odd places, according to political memorabilia collector Tom French, who says Dwight Eisenhower appeared on cigarettes and women’s hosiery in 1952.

However, people who have purchased scads of Obama china, posters, cologne and commemorative newspapers in the hope of eventually making a killing may be in for a rude awakening down the road.

“You need to be careful about what you’re buying, because you’re never guaranteed that it will be valuable,” says Barb Grieman, president of the Better Business Bureau of Minnesota and North Dakota. “It’s not a sure bet.”

French, whose Tom French Americana political collectibles business is in Capitola, Calif., says so much Obama presidential paraphernalia has inundated the marketplace that most of it will probably never be worth much.

“As a rule, what I think is going to have value are things that were issued for a one-day event, like a rally,” French says. Items associated with Obama’s campaigns for the Illinois and U.S. senates have a good chance of being valuable one day, too, he adds.

That means the most worthwhile thing you can probably do with that Obama bobblehead is to take it out of the attic and let the little ones have fun playing with it!

Blair S. Walker is a freelance writer based in Miami.