Military buttons came off uniforms, and they carry the same regimental and corps devices as cap badges, only smaller. The front of a tunic took large buttons and the cuffs and pockets took small ones, so the same pattern turns up in more than one size.
Each one was fastened every morning by a particular man, on a particular tunic, through whatever his service involved, and the thin patches in the gilt are where his fingers went. Buttons are also the cheapest way into militaria by some distance, which is why so many people start here, usually with the regiment a relative served in, and end up with a frame of them on the wall.
Turn one over and there is usually a backmark: the maker's name, and often their city, stamped around the reverse. Firms such as Firmin and Gaunt supplied buttons for well over a century, and the wording and style of the backmark is one of the ways collectors work out roughly when a button was made.
Not every uniform button is military. Railway companies, shipping lines, police forces and private households all had livery buttons made in the same way, and they are collected alongside the regimental patterns.
Sets tend to be harder to find than singles. Buttons were routinely cut off a uniform when it was retired, and most of the ones that survive have been loose in a tin or a drawer ever since, so a matching set that has stayed together is worth having.
We list buttons as they come in, both singly and in sets.
