01/26/2026
What is in My Button Box – Week 2
When you have recently discovered that you love buttons, it is hard not to want to buy every jar or tin that you come across. I know this from experience. But I no longer feel the need to buy every button that I find for sale. So, how do you know when it is a good buy and when you should leave what you find on the shelf.
To understand if it is a good buy, you need to understand why you want to buy the buttons in the first place. If you are crafter and are using buttons for crafts or washable clothing, then more modern buttons are probably a good buy. If you want to start collecting, then you need to be able to discern if the jar has desirable buttons.
Unless you are at a sanctioned button event, you cannot go by price. There are a lot of vintage and antique vendors that think that every jar of buttons is valuable without understanding that the measure of the jar are the buttons inside. Most general dealers have very little knowledge about the true value of buttons. And just because the jar or tin is old doesn’t mean the buttons are.
I look for resale value when I am buying buttons. That means for me, that I am looking for desirable vintage and antique buttons. When looking at the buttons, I like to see buttons made of glass, vegetable ivory and midcentury plastics in the jar. Sometimes I will spot an interesting metal button when I turn the jar in my hands. I have asked if I could open the jar and see all of the buttons. I have never been told no.
If there are mostly modern plastics, I am going to pass on the buttons. A number of mother of pearl can be good or bad because there are still so many produced today. Being able to distinguish the old from the new becomes important.
You may find jars that have been picked clean of one kind of button by collectors looking for desirable buttons and selling on the rest. There is nothing wrong with this practice but you need to know when certain types of buttons are missing. Glass seems to be one material that can be missing from jars or boxes of buttons. I was in NC at an antique store and searched through a whole cardboard box of buttons. Not a single glass button in the box. What I did find was some amazing celluloid buttons for fifty cents per button, including a light house that we sold for $35.00.
Also, if you are negotiating the price, determine if you really want the jar or tin. Sometimes, you can get a better deal if you are willing to leave it with the vendor.
For some reason, people also associate dirty and threads with old. Modern plastic buttons can be dirty, have the threads still attached and not old…just dirty. Liz and I always remove threads and clean our buttons before sorting. This leads me into next week’s topic of how get your buttons ready for a sort.
