Lehigh University Professor Roger Simon collects political campaign buttons. It’s really fascinating to study buttons from past elections, to see names and faces of people who ran but weren’t elected and to see the changes in typography and design. Simon’s oldest piece is a McKinley and Hobart pin from 1896. While there are tie tacks and lapel pins, the collection is largely made up of pin-back buttons.“Artifacts make history real,” says Simon in explaining his passion. “I’m not a really serious collector of anything, but I’ve always been fascinated with things that reflect the times that produced them.” Simon teaches in the history department, and has written several books on the impact of industrialization and the urbanization process. You can learn more about Lehigh’s history department here. You can read more about Simon’s collection in this article from 2004. We have one update to that story: today’s freshmen were born in 1998 and barely remember the election of 2008.