Box O' Buttons

Last weekend I attended a meeting that took place in a hotel conference center.  In another conference room across the foyer  a button society was holding a show.  Outside the room was a large sign indicating the show was open to the public, so before my meeting started I popped in to look around.  I was amazed at the wide range of buttons, some of which cost a lot of money.The displays made me think about the collection of buttons I got from a friend back in 2009. After I admired and organized the buttons I put them in a box and and put the box in in the basement, where I promptly forgot about them. I recently found the  box as part of my decluttering, but didn't know what to do with it.

All of the exhibitors had signs at their tables indicating where the were from, and one of them lived just a little to the west of me. I mentioned my collection to her, and asked if she'd be willing to take look at it to see if any of the buttons were collectible.  She offered me a business card and told me to email her.

It took me a couple of days to get around to it, but I finally sent the email yesterday.  The message included a photo of the buttons that I'd posted on my blog.  It only took a couple of hours to get a response, which told me that (as I suspected) my buttons had no collectible value.  However, she commented on the "cute little owl buttons in the bowl of gold metal buttons", saying that I might want to keep them because they were made of metalized plastic, likely from the 1950s, and interesting.

"Interesting"

Now when I drop the box of buttons off at the thrift store donation center I don't have to worry that I'm giving away something valuable.