In my ongoing and all consuming quest to obtain every last vintage goody on the planet I toted a coffee can full of old buttons home a couple of weeks ago. I dumped the can out in a heap on the table to admire my new pretties. And pretty they are, in a variety of vintage shapes, sizes and colors. My husband, JW, shares my passion for scavenging treasures even if he doesn't always show it in the same way that I do. I've never once seen him do a little "let's party" dance and squeal when he finds a Pyrex casserole dish. But still he did seem to be interested in the mountain of buttons and surprised me by volunteering to sort through them all while he watched American Pickers..
I was grateful for his offer and figured that once he had the buttons sorted I would photograph them in groups by color and list a purple pile and a green pile and a pink pile and so and so forth in one of my Etsy shops. I figured I'd be making all of my potential crafting and sewing and collecting customers so happy by selling them "handfuls" of my very cool old buttons. But first I needed to research the market and this is where my troubles begin.
OMG!!! Who knew there was soooo much to know about buttons?! The first thing I realized was that shoppers would want to know just how many buttons they were purchasing for $6.00. Go figure. I guess it was that nasty lazy streak in me that made me think that I could just sell a "handful" of purple buttons.
Sigh....ok, I'll count them. But wait, there are buttons that have desirability based on what material was used to make them, as in Bakelite. And in my research I'm finding that sellers know what
year a button was made...huh, how do they do that?
As if I'm not already overwhelmed with collecting, researching, creating, photographing, listing;
and, if there's time left, cooking and cleaning! The buttons are in envelopes by color and soon (I promise) I'm going to start the counting and identifying process.
I did manage to get six buttons listed on my
Etsy Patterns Shop but I know I don't deserve much of an "atta girl" for it cause it was just three cards with two gold colored metal buttons on each card. There was no sorting or identifying required.
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| I thought these adorable buttons would be a cinch to list until I realized that they may be Bakelite...or they could be celluloid....or they could be glass. HELP! | | | | | |
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| These were easy. | | | | | | | |
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| I really love the little sea foam green buttons. They have little pearls in them. |
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| So....would these be plastic, Bakelite or celluloid? |
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| If anybody has any vintage button expertise I'd be oh so grateful to hear from you. |
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