We had our doubts about the veracity of this photograph, but we're beginning to believe it's not a PhotoShopped composite. Someone pointed us to it in an eBay listing, which, if you don't hurry, may not be there when you get around to looking, since it's a "buy it now."

From the eBay listing, here's the discussion leading up to this photo:

According to New Yorker writer Ryan Lizza, "Before [Obama] went off [to Harvard], he said to some of his community-organizing buddies he needed that credential, that Harvard Law degree, to access the corridors of power and to have that credential because he wasn't going to get that as a community organizer in Chicago." Yet once there, classmates didn't remember him as especially interested in politics. That changed in February, 1990 when he was elected as the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. But perhaps an equally defining, and less recognized moment in Obama's political awakening was watching Gantt's campaign unfold that year as he challenged Helms in the most high-profile U.S. Senate campaign of 1990.

Barack Obama, at his fellow HLS student Bradford Berenson's apartment, where he watched the 1990 mid-term election returns. (New York Times)

What's somewhat confusing is that this photo clearly shows the 1990-vintage Harvey Gantt campaign T-shirt, while the eBay listing is clearly for a 1996 campaign poster of Gantt's second run against Jesse Helms.

Ah, the memories!