"Admit Bearer to My Bench" - Collecting Vice President's Gallery Passes to the U.S. Senate Chamber

Pass to the Reserved Gallery of the U.S. Senate Chamber - signed by Vice President Thomas R. Marshall (1917). Image Credit: Collection of the Author. After observing the collector's market in this area for the last several months, I wanted to provide some initial thoughts on the rarity of Vice Presidential-signed U.S. Senate Chamber gallery passes of any sort (ranging from the earliest reporter's passes in the 19th century to the Vice President's Gallery passes in the later 20th century and beyond). I emphasize the word initial , as this assessment will continue to evolve as we monitor what passes continue to surface in museums, private collections, and in the marketplace. As will be discussed further in future posts, standardized VPOTUS-signed passes to the U.S. Senate Chamber of any sort did not begin to materialize until at least the early 1870s (the oldest one in my collection dates to 1872). Note that these early examples were not passes to the Vice President's Gal...

Flag of the Vice President of the United States - Image Credit: Wikipedia Commons When people first hear that I collect Vice President's gallery passes to the U.S. Senate Chamber, they typically respond with genuine interest - though with a slight undertone of thinking, "that's an oddly specific sort of thing to collect." And it is! As such, I thought it would be helpful to readers to provide some background on what got me into this subfield of American political memorabilia collecting. Overall, as a historian who specializes in several aspects of American history, I have long been fascinated with studying Members of Congress, Presidents, Vice Presidents, and other noteworthy political figures. I have also long been fascinated by American political ephemera - especially Congressional Gallery Passes. I remember visiting the U.S. Capitol Building as a teenager and first seeing these elegant, ornately designed passes - thinking they were a "Golden Ticket" of so...

Vice President Dan Quayle U.S. Senate Chamber Pass, ca. 1989 - Image Credit: Collection of the Author.  "Admit Bearer to My Bench" (named after a note that former Vice President Thomas R. Marshall wrote on the back of one of his VPOTUS passes in 1917) is intended to serve as a fun and informative online resource for those who are interested in learning about the fascinating history and evolution of Vice President's gallery passes to the U.S. Senate Chamber. In use since at least the late 19th century, these passes (including the one here from former Vice President Dan Quayle's tenure from 1989-1993) have gone through a series of evolutions - changing dramatically in appearance and scope over the decades. However, they have always served the central purpose of providing access to a special section of the U.S. Senate gallery for friends and VIP guests of the Vice President. Interestingly, some of these passes are relatively easy to find in today's collectors' ma...