Fun Finds: Button Bonanza!

Okay, so last weekend started the period where folks in my neighborhood can set out their junk for pick up.  This, of course, means that the pickers, scrappers, and junkers were out in force, with me right there in their midst.

Finds were few and far between--a couple of Playboys here, a boxful of Matchbox cars there--but nothing spectacular.  I did find a fabulous old wood file cabinet, but it weighed about six tons, so I decided to leave it where it was.  I could not picture wrestling that thing to a second floor booth!

But every little find adds up, and that's why we do these things.

The best find of the day was this stash of vintage buttons, many still on the card.  I found them on the corner where a woman was digging through the drawers of a busted up antique dresser.  There was a cardboard drawer thing a few feet away, so I started going through it.  That's where I found these.

Some of them were plain and everyday:

I particularly like the one on the lower left.  The flowers on the corner of the card are embossed!  Such a fancy detail for such plain, ordinary buttons!

Others were much more fancy.  This pic doesn't do them justice.  The pink ones are incredibly vibrant and the glass ones in the middle are almost prismatic.

For the most part, the fancier ones are older than the every day ones.  The row in the middle are marked "Made in Germany--US Zone" on the card.  And, of course, you gotta love the nurses buttons!

There were lots more in this stash, but this is a representative sample.  There were also many cards that were missing several buttons, old pill bottle full of buttons and so on.  I'm going to sell the fancy button cards individually, but bag all the plainer ones together and sell as a lot. 

I found some old small jars from a spice rack at the same curb.  They were filthy and the labels were coming off, so I soaked them clean and took the labels off.  I'm taking the loose buttons and the ones from partial cards and putting them in the bottle for sale.  It turned into a tidy little find!

One more story and then I'll close.  I pulled up at another curb where someone was working a pile, and the guy grabbed the box he was going through, jumped in his truck and sped away!  I guess I look pretty rough when I'm hot, sweaty, and dirty!