Well the Badge-A-Minit company hasn’t gone out of business yet and my old hand crank button maker and circle cutter is still somewhere in storage.
Back in the day, I used to offer my customers the option of getting a photo button for each child attending the party as a more personalized form of party favor. But that was also in the days of Polaroid cameras. Try finding any film for those relics nowadays :)
I also could make a fairly decent chunk of change on South Street in Philly doing photo buttons on weekends.
But for whatever reason, buttons in general just aren’t that much in demand.
But the disappearance of Polaroid cameras and film really killed the portability and ease of making photo buttons for me.
In those early days when Polaroids were being rapidly replaced by Digital cameras (and later phone cameras) the portability of digital printers was pretty much not available until years later.
Times change. But at least I kept the name.
So, if you’re nostalgic for buttons, you can still make your own for a minimal investment.
www.badgeaminit.com
www.buttonsonline.com
And there’s also a company in Illinois that sells really nice pre-cut snap-together clear Acrylic buttons as large as 3 inches. All that’s needed is a circle cutter. I’ll see if I can look through my old records. They really are the nicest buttons out there nowadays.
And in spite of the general market decline, I still think that school kids could make some decent cash selling buttons with the team logos at football/basketball/soccer games (either personally or as a group fundraiser.)