Does anyone keep a button box anymore?
Yes -- I have a button box. It has my buttons, my mother's buttons, my mother in law's buttons and my grandmother's buttons. Grandma kept her buttons in a metal cookie tin. As a child, to keep us out of trouble on a rainy day, the button box would come out. Dull pointed needles were threaded with very long, sturdy, threads. We would string the buttons on the threads.
Quiet activity, helps train little finger muscles, causes no damage, makes interesting noises when sorting the buttons, and easy to clean up. Later, my DGM would cut the threads and return the buttons to the box. Remember, this was long before the days of TV. <G>
However -- I got frustrated with one mass button box when I wanted to find matching buttons. I have one of those upright boxes with lots of little plastic drawers in it. The buttons are now separated by color. The biggest drawer has the white buttons, and the colors are in the smaller drawers. Makes it much faster to find out if I have an appropriate button or not. (More often than not, I have a button that works.)
If I had a child who needed to string buttons, I could use just the white ones. There's enough in that large drawer to keep a child happy for quite awhile.
That brings to mind the local fabric store. It has a tub of loose buttons. If you use the regular scoop, and just dip in and take a scoop -- whatever comes up-- then the price is quite low. If you sort out matching buttons, then you have to pay a per-each price that's much higher. Perhaps the person who wants old assorted buttons could find a store like this, and be willing to accept just assorted, without them being old. Some of these buttons are quite fancy.
The local craft store sometimes has jars of buttons that are assorted, but not so fancy. These are good for kid projects.
For a source of old buttons, don't forget eBay. I just tried it and searched the words Buttons Box -- and got 83 entries. If the buttons are not needed yesterday, then this is a possible source for the person who is wanting old buttons.
Alice in Oregon -- where we've had warmer than normal weather.
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