There is a national button club. You might check in your area and see if there is a branch. It is quite educational and they do very beautiful things with them. There are certain ways in which they have to be displayed and they have classifications that art items are made with them. The buttons we collect are from the 1700 and 1800 hundreds and are real works of art. My favorite is picture buttons which are made of metal and are usually larger than a quarter and are detailed metal sculptures of classical literature and myths. Many of the men collect military buttons. Some buttons are glass in different colors and some are jems, wood and bone. The bakelite are popular because they were the first plastic. They were quite large before zippers and were worth removing for reuse. I also have a collection of sterling silver buttons. It is a total ballgame. High to low. Some libraries have a book "The Big Book of Buttons" that explains the history of each style. It is out of print but usually available in the reference section as it is quite large.