Back in the early 1980s when I first became involved in the
baseball card and memorabilia hobby on a professional basis, among of the more
popular non-card collectibles were World Series press pins.
They were small, and thus readily displayed, colorful and
not all that expensive if you limited your acquisitions to post-war models.
Sadly, an influx of creditable Chinese fakes around the turn
of the century largely put the mockers on press pins as a viable collectible
for the average hobbyist.
To be sure, press pins have cash value today, but I recently
read an account in an old issue of The Sporting News that detailed how a press pin
came to be worth tens of thousands of dollars to Zack Taylor.

“Zack Taylor credits his new job as manager of the Browns to
the luck of a button—a World’s Series press pin,” Ruhl wrote.
“Or at least he is crediting much of his success in landing
the post to a small lapel button of the kind which are issued to sports writers
and club officials at the annual classics.
“Realizing he needed this credential to gain admittance to
restricted quarters to make the contacts for a job . . . Taylor appealed to a
Pittsburgh sports editor, Al Abrams of the Post-Gazette, telling him the loan
of the button ‘may help me get a job.’
:Zack used the button two successive nights and, returning
the pin, told Abrams: ‘I think something will come out of this. I can’t tell
you now whom I was talking to, but you’ll hear about it later.’

Taylor managed the Browns through the 1951 season, never finishing higher than sixth place in the American League.
Ruhl’s column didn’t specify whether it was Yankees or the
Dodgers press pin that gave Taylor the access he needed to land his first big
league managerial job. Value of either (genuine) today seems to be in the
ballpark of $600-750
. Of course you can get a fake for much less.
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