BLOOMINGTON - Deceased presidents are not just immortalized on money. They live on in campaign memorabilia, including some sold Sunday at the Third Sunday Market at the Interstate Center.

Burdette Erickson of Janesville, Wis., sells political campaign memorabilia from past campaigns. Erickson, 71, displayed a delegate badge from the 1960 Democratic National Convention, where John F. Kennedy won the Democratic nomination for president.

Labeled "Delegate No. 54," the badge represented Tom Bartman, a floor leader at the convention, who lived in New Berlin, Wis. Erickson said when Bartman passed away, his daughter sold boxes of American Legion materials, and Erickson found the badge buried in the box, along with several letters that Kennedy personally wrote to Bartman.

Kennedy wrote one such letter on an airplane from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., immediately after the convention to thank Bartman for supporting him despite rival Stuart Symington's attempts to persuade him to switch his allegiance.

Erickson said he sold the letter and others from Kennedy for $500 each and priced the badge at $115.

"This is my reason for getting up in the morning," he said of his wares.

"Antiques are closely related to history," Erickson, a retired eighth-grade history teacher, said. "It's all related to history, to preserving the past. It's stuff that's handed down and it's stuff that's in the way. The nice thing is it reaches an antique dealer and somebody gets to have it and enjoy it."

He picked up two pins that projected two different images, depending on the position of the pins. One pin contained the images of John Kennedy and John Swainson, the governor of Michigan from 1961 to 1963. The other pin, from 1952, contained the images of Adlai Stevenson and G. Mennen Williams, who was re-elected governor of Michigan in 1952. Erickson said pins with two images are called flashers.

"Stevenson was one of the first ones associated with a flasher," he said. "He and (Dwight) Eisenhower were the first two big flashers," he said with a slight chuckle.

Erickson said artifacts from losing campaigns usually sell for higher prices than those from winning campaigns.

"There's something about the losers that makes it more collectible," he said. "Sometimes it's because they're forgotten.

Another former history teacher, Paul Allee, from Jackson, Mo., also sold political wares at the market. Allee displayed, among other items, a promotional pack of cigarettes with the face of Adlai Stevenson II on display from his 1956 presidential campaign against Eisenhower. Allee said the packs, which he priced Sunday at $45, were given away in 1956 to promote the campaign.

Also for sale at Allee's table was a pin promoting Herbert Hoover that a supporter in 1928 was to bend and attach to his breast pocket so that the writing was visible.

"It's never been bent, so that makes it better," Allee said of the pin, which he priced at $28.

The Third Sunday Market is held the third Sunday of every month from May through October.