Flap to envelope with seal from Inauguration Ceremonies, March 4, 1909, William H. Taft, 1909

This collection consists of 1,250 pieces of political and presidential ephemera recovered from the apartment of Barry Landau. The National Archives gave each item from the investigation a unique number which is noted in the column on the far right of the container list. The numbers are sequential for the most part, starting with NARA#45 and ending around NARA#10,040. Some numbers are out of sequential order due to the fact that some items were returned on different dates, some items are oversized, and some items were added to our deposit at a later date and never assigned a NARA#. For our purposes each item needed a unique box and folder #. The NARA number is mostly useful for future tracking of the items if any new information about the provenance is revealed. Several items in the collection have already been returned to their rightful libraries before this finding add was finished. They have been left on the inventory, and their removal was noted.

For more background on the Barry Landau theft you can read the following articles.

Eliza Gray’s article, “The Collector” from the New Rpublic http://www.newrepublic.com/article/politics/magazine/98537/collector-barry-landau-memorabilia-theft

The FBI Bulletin here

http://www.fbi.gov/baltimore/press-releases/2012/barry-landau-conspirator-sentenced-to-prison-in-scheme-to-steal-valuable-historical-documents

in the Baltimore Sun

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2012-02-07/news/bs-md-landau-guilty-20120207_1_barry-h-landau-collector-of-presidential-memorabilia-theft-of-major-artwork