But as grotesque as the auction might be, it's hardly surprising. The still-young United States -- deprived of the bones, blood, and fading locks of centuries-old saints, as well as a state church to celebrate them -- has long made a habit of fetishizing relics from our late presidents instead. After Abraham Lincoln's assassination in 1865, a famous photograph of the bloodstained sheets in Washington's Peterson House where he had lain entered popular circulation, and artifacts were distributed. The bed in which he died is now in the Chicago History Museum. A stained pillow ended up in the Peterson House, and a chair went to the Henry Ford Museum. But as James Swanson wrote in Bloody Crimes, a stained coverlet in the photograph disappeared, apparently taken by souvenir hunters.

The other most famous presidential victim of an assassin's bullet is no different. Earlier this year, the hearse that carried John F. Kennedy's body from a Dallas hospital to Air Force One in November 1963 sold for the eye-popping sum of $160,000. The pink suit splattered with his blood that Jackie Kennedy wore -- which has been described as "a sacred relic of a national nightmare" -- is stashed in the National Archives. It was donated anonymously and won't be on view until 2103, although the continued obsession with all things Kennedy suggests there will be an audience for it even then. Meanwhile, the National Museum of Health and Medicine, which has just reopened in suburban D.C., contains a vertebra from James A. Garfield, complete with a hole from the bullet that killed the 20th president.

With luck, America won't see a president assassinated anytime soon, although that will only increase the value of the few pieces of macabre merchandise we have. Meanwhile, the Reagan vial may be distasteful, but it's as American as mom, baseball, and apple pie -- or perhaps supply-side economics, winning one for the Gipper, and jelly beans.