Had some fun going through an old tin of buttons this afternoon.
Don’t stop anything special you’re doing, but if you have a minute
I’ll show you what I found . . .
This heavy large round cannister is full of buttons—old ship the
Shirley Jean on the cover. Do you know its history? Neither do I.
(note: for some reason my photos are not enlarging, will work on it)
I was mainly going through to see what buttons I wanted to save for

inside the button box ©booksandbuttons
myself and what I would put off til another day. First I pulled out the
cute old red plastic ones and there were quite a few. The little red star
has a tip broken off, but the rest are in generally good “used” condition.
A silver penny—a black thread leads to it—shows the relative size of
the group—from 1/2 an inch to 1 1/2 inches in diameter. I decided to
try to sell those on ebay.

about 60 Vintage red plastic buttons ©booksandbuttons

a silver penny shows relative sizes of the red button collection click to enlarge ©booksandbuttons
And as I pulled the red ones, I bumped into plenty of others of interest.
I guess my favorites would be the old, old brass ones–maybe from the
1800s? Three had turned green and I threw those away to keep them
from contaminating the rest of them. Hope I’m not too late.

Ten early brass buttons ©booksandbittons about 5/8 in in diameter ©booksandbuttons
And the sparklers!! Love them!

sparkly rhinestone buttons from the 1950s era ©booksandbuttons
I made a special grouping I call “yearning for the fifties” because there
is something about them that reminds me of when I was younger. Look
at those pink shades! Ooh, I get shivers.

Variety of 1950 costume buttons surround a large black velvet button ©booksandbuttons
Last photo shows some antique celluloids—not a favorite category of
mine, but the National Button Society has esteem for them, so I do, too.

Old celluloid buttons from the 1920s and 1930s ©booksandbuttons
I still have a lot of buttons left
in that round tin! Hope you can find a good buy of buttons to sort through, too.
Well, even though you said “Don’t stop what you are doing…”, I had to, once I learned that you were exploring an old box of buttons!
Those are some real beauties. Look forward to seeing more!
I had forgotten all about this tin! Nice January surprise.
Glad you enjoyed it, too.