WHAT CONDITION THE CONDITION IS IN: 88-Day Confirmed Operation Warranty. Unopened and fully functional. Scroll down to learn why this lapel pin thinks it’s remarkable. Spoiler: it has a point.

There it is, resting in the palm of your hand. It's a pin no bigger than a postage stamp, gold-toned and enamel-yellow, stamped with that bold, italicized wordmark that once meant something almost religious to a certain kind of person who spent their weekends in darkrooms smelling of developer fluid and quiet ambition.

The Nikon Brand Logo Pin is, technically speaking, a trinket. It's the sort of thing handed across a convention table at Photokina or tucked into a welcome kit alongside a warranty card nobody ever mailed in.

This particular one reflects the late 1960s and '70s corporate identity, before the blue accents of 1988, before the "sequential rays" of 2003 turned the logo into something that looked like it was trying too hard to suggest motion. This was back when yellow meant passion and black meant trust, and Nikon apparently felt no need to explain itself further, because the SLR slung around your neck did all the talking.

It's not rare, which is what makes it interesting. Collectors don't want it because it's scarce, they want it because it's theirs. It’s a small, shining item from an era when a camera company could make you feel, with a straight face and a piece of gold toned brass, that you weren't just buying a machine but joining something.