Hey Guys! M. T. here. I have been collecting team pins for the last 4 years, two district competitions a year, one year of states, one year of words, and buttons from a FLL world competition. I counted last year with a total of about 480 buttons. I was wondering if there were any other avid button collectors out there. Button Counts? Any rare buttons? Any awesome ways to store you buttons?
I have three hats covered in pins, and a huge tote bag full of pins as well.
I know I’ve seen someone with an entire lab coat or something that was almost entirely covered in team buttons. Try and find them lol
There was a guy at the state competition I went to with a trench coat of buttons that weighed 12 lbs or more
My son created a cape out of 7 years of button collection. It weighed over 20 pounds. Make sure you use a strong fabric and consider hot gluing the pins closed because they get bumped off pretty easily in the stands.
I almost covered a stovepipe hat in buttons, it’s heavy. I can’t wear it anymore because of the sheer weight on my head, along with various pokey thingies. 40+ buttons after 2 regionals.
One of our past students put all the buttons she collected each year on a framed canvas and hung them on her wall.
I did this and if you can see in the background there are metal detectors, all of the security guards stopped to take a picture of me and agreed to just give me a pat down because of course there was metal on me
He used denim, but I think canvas would work possible better. It’s not as heavy and it’s pretty robust. He also made a sash for alliance partners and famous teams.
I’ve been collecting since about 2009, I have no idea how many buttons are on my wall, but this is my current collection without any duplicates (same team OK, duplicated designs removed). It is also arranged into a rainbow gradient on a sheet of ~ 5.5ft x 3.5ft sheet of canvas fabric. Yes I need to update it every year, it takes forever, but I love it.
We were thinking about doing something other than buttons. Anybody veered from the straight-and-narrow on that and do something different?
We have one student who’s really good with a tattoo gun (he did the “Mothor” on my arm), but that would just take too long.
There was a team who passed out really tiny airplanes, and I’ve seen a bunch of team hand out 3D key chains. Another one is those rubber bracelets
If your team was the one that put the same black blanket on the side of their pit in Detroit last year, I was the one that put the two pirate robotics 6032 buttons on your blanket if not, good for you for having them buddy!
My Jacket weighs about 25lbs and my collection weighs about 45lbs I have big plans for the collection and my team has nicknamed it “the suit of armor”.
That sounds great! I would definately like to do something like that with my pins, I just need to find a jacket to do it with.
I cant even find my own team’s buttons but I know you have it based on the other buttons
