Pinback Buttons 2024 Stamps

Description

2024 Pinback Buttons
• Commemorates the popularity of colorful pinback buttons with different styles and messages

Stamp Category: Commemorative
Value: 73¢ First Class Mail Rate (Forever)
First Day of Issue: August 15, 2024
First Day City: Hartford, Connecticut
Printing Method: Offset, Flexographic
Format: Panes of 20
Tagging: Nonphosphored Type III, Spot Tag

History the stamp represents: Buttons have been popular since the 18th century, particularly as political tools. The pinback button was patented in 1896, and most modern buttons are still based on that same design.

The man behind that design was Benjamin Whitehead. In 1893, he patented a design in which a transparent celluloid film was placed over a photograph and mounted to a badge, to protect the image. Then on July 21, 1896, he patented his “Badge Pin or Button,” which had a metal pin on the back of the button to easily attach it to clothing.

Whitehead’s invention was immediately put to use in a variety of ways. Politicians started using buttons in the presidential election that same year. Voters used buttons to show their support for important issues, such as whether our dollar should be backed by gold or silver. At a time when few people were familiar with printed images, advertisers used buttons to announce their products. And the first button to promote a band was for Roney’s Boys, a hymnal group formed in 1901 by Henry Roney. Beginning in the 1950s, buttons for musical acts would take on a whole new life.

Over the years, buttons have said and pictured just about everything imaginable. Whether promoting a product or ideal, or expressing a simple thought, they have endured for well over a century. That’s especially impressive given today’s technology, proving one 19th-century advertiser right – they’re “the greatest fad of all.”