Green background with dark yellow text.

Parisian Novelty Company was the oldest Button Company in Chicago - served Chicago for roughly 120 years. Founded in 1898, the company was a national leader in all things related to buttons, production, machinery, etc. 

In 2008, another classic Chicago Company, The Matchless Group (founded 1885) purchased the Button division of Parisian Novelty Company to become the Matchless Parisian Novelty Inc. Matchless Parisian Novelty is currently still a company specializing in button production, located in Chicago on West 49th Place. 

Some of the decor that you find in the Busy Beaver Button Company actually came from the Parisian Novelty Company and was purchased when the company formally went out of business.

Beige button with stains and blue text.

In business around the turn of the 20th century, the National Registry Company was located at 45 Pine Street, New York.  According to an issue of the United States Investor published on April 23, 1898, the National Registry Company worked in conjunction with Fidelity & Casualty Co.  While the latter furnished the insurance policy, the National Registry Co. kept a record of policyholders and a designated person to be contacted should the policyholder be seriously injured or become unconscious.  With an annual registration fee of one dollar, the company also furnished subscribers with an identification card for a carrying case.  If the case was lost or stolen, the National Registry Co. offered a one dollar reward for the return of the case and its contents to the company’s office.  

Gray and blue text around illustration of a cyber pac-man with two squares shooting forward from his mouth on white background.

LSI Logic Corporation was an electronics company specializing in data storage and computing, founded in 1981 in Milpitas, California by Wilfred Corrigan, Mitchell Bohn, Bill O'Meaa, and Rob Walker. Corrigan, the lead founder, served as CEO up until 2005. LSI Logic had many early investors and had its IPO valued at $153 million when it went public in 1983. LSI Logic is noted for the work it performed in collaboration with Sony Computer Entertainment. The popular Sony game system, the Playstation, had its singular CPU chip fitted by LSI. In 2014, the Singaporean company Avago acquired LSI Logic for $6.6 billion.

Red text on an off white background.

The Jefferson County Co-op Service Company is the name of an agricultural cooperative located in Jefferson County, Wisconsin. In 1947, the co-op purchased a feed business from a Wisconsin resident who was surnamed Gurr. The co-op operated mills in Lake Mill, Hebron, Sullivan, and Jefferson, Wisconsin.

Green text along top edge and very small green text along the bottom edge with a green and white illustration of cotton on a blue circle on a white background.

Made for Ingenue Magazine, a teen magazine. "I Cotton to You" is a phrase meaning "I like you" or indicating attraction to someone. It is said this came about because cotton was often cargo on riverboats and it would get stuck to workers' and passengers' hair or clothing. 

Lowercase black text along top edge with uppercase black text below on an yellow background.

Hippy Sippy was a Japanese candy produced in the late 1960s and imported into the United States by R.J. Albert & Sons. The packaging was shaped like a syringe and the candy resembled brightly colored pills. The candy played on the popular hippy and drug culture happening in the United States at the time, and each package came with a button that typically stated "hippy sippy says" and then another phrase alluding to drug usage slang such as "I'll try anything". The FDA ultimately recalled the candy in 1969 because of the controversy surrounding the drug paraphernalia inspired packaging.

An illustration of a green and white bumble bee with wings and human-like hands. The bee is holding a three leaf clover. The top half of the button is white and the bottom half is green.

Have info on this button? Contact us here.

Six black overlapping semicircles with a diamond in the middle form a decorative background around the word "Galleria" with black text on the upper and lower edges on a silver background.

The Galleria in Portland, Oregon, was the result of a remodel in the 1970s. The original building had been constructed in 1910 by Olds Wortman and King. It was the first department store to take up an entire city block in the Northwest. The building is located on the corners of Morrison, Alder, Tenth, and West Park streets. The store was taken over by the Schlessinger Company in 1925 and the building was remodeled with new window displays and interior enhancements to make the store resemble Chicago’s famous Marshall Field’s building. Department stores continued to utilize the space until the 1970s when the building was obtained by Bill and Sam Naito who then turned the large building into a mall. The newly renovated Galleria held 42 stores on three floors. As interest in malls diminished over the years, the building moved all of the retail onto the first floor and the Western Culinary Institute and restaurant moved into the upper floors. 

White text on a green background. The business information is smaller and rounds the side of the button face.

After working for Frank’s Drum Shop on Wabash Avenue for five years, William Crowden (1931-2013) established Drums Unlimited.  He operated the retail business from November 1963 to January 1991.  It became one of the most renowned music retail locations in the Midwest with customers that included world famous drummers, i.e. Gene Krupa, Buddy Rich and Max Roach.

Large red text with a smaller piece of red text under it in quotes, both are surrounded by a ring made of two blues lines and one red line  

The Choozie Wear Corporation was founded in 1980 in New York and closed in 1996. The Choozie Wear Corporation sold children's clothing and switched from producing clothing in Hong Kong and China to producing clothing in U.S. cities during the early 90s.