Trump is selling parts of his Mug Shot suit

Mr Mercuri said the idea for selling the suit samples came from NFT INT and was inspired by the way sports figures sell pieces of their jerseys to fans. Mr. Trump was “aware of the trend and receptive” to the proposal, he said, and “generously turned over the lawsuit to NFT INT.” He felt like the public wanted a piece of history.”

The suit was then authenticated by MEARS, a company that specializes in validating sports memorabilia. Troy R. Kinunen, the company’s CEO, said that “the team at CollectTrumpCards delivered the suit directly from the president” and that MEARS then verified certain design elements of the garment through photos and video, including the placement of the pockets , buttons and the collar of the suit jacket, which Mr. Trump had sewn to the back to keep it in place. (Although given the number of blue suits Trump appears to own, it’s hard to see how anyone can tell them apart.)

Selling the mugshot tracks, to some extent, along with other examples of fan culture. Paige Rubin, assistant vice president and head of handbag sales at Christie’s, said there is a nearly insatiable public appetite for memorabilia of the famous and infamous, and that the most valuable memorabilia at auction is often determined by its provenance: the object that you sell resonates with the fan base? Does it have to do with an iconic moment in a career?”

Likewise, there is a long tradition of auctioning memorabilia of public figures, including many presidents, as Summer Anne Lee, a historian of presidential clothing at the Fashion Institute of Technology, noted. Pieces of Abraham Lincoln’s blood-stained sheets regularly surface auctionand a few Richard Nixon’s glasses from the time of his dismissal were sold in 2005 for $1,955. In 2019 there would have been a pair of underpants Eva BraunHitler’s wife, were distributed for almost $5,000.

Despite the fact that Melania Trump also sold one of her most striking White House outfits — the white hat she wore during the 2018 French state visit — as part of her own NFT drop, and despite Trump’s own history of monetization with his own brand in a way that other political candidates might not dare, it is almost unheard of for a living president to market his own memorabilia for his own profit, Ms. Lee said. Although NFT INT is not associated with the Trump Organization and Mr. Trump is not part of the company, as a licensor, Mr. Trump would likely receive a percentage of sales.

That makes it in his interest to divide the suit into as many pieces as possible – both financially and, even more emphatically, conceptually.