Rosebud Factory Buttons

"Here is the history. We all know that Mattel had a factory in UK. Rosebud. I do not know what the date was that it was officially shut down but at some point in the factories closing there was a clean up crew that came in to the factory to gut the place, either for new tenants or for destruction. The Uncle of the person I bought these from was part of this clean up crew. There was around a pallet worth of boxes of the metal buttons. The gentlemen got the boxes primarily for metal scrap and was going to recycle them for money. Well, time continued to pass and around 40 years later the boxes never went to scrap but they were in his barn for decades getting weathered and eventually most of the boxes deteriorated and the buttons spewed everywhere on the ground and such. See attached photos.

My contact in UK reached out to me to sell these. The loose buttons were far to many and in marginal conditions as pictured. "Most of the loose buttons have been gathered up for recycling. I have only purchased the complete sleeves." There were sleeves of buttons on the bottom of the pallet that still were secure in their original light paper wrap. We put a deal together for me to buy all the complete sleeves of buttons. Some of the paperwrap on some sleeves is torn or ends opened and few have some light rust staining to the bare metal absolute edges that does not impact the button. The paperwrap is very fragile. Most are in excellent condition. I got one of the only remaining outer cardboard boxes for the Beachbomb with 12 sleeves of Rear Board versions.

These "sleeves" of buttons were manufactured in Hong Kong and shipped to Rosebud. The sleeves are numbered with the Mattel car number. These were to have been loaded into the machine that inserted a button onto the card prior to the bubble being applied. The cool factor here is pretty awesome and would be cool additions to a collection. Especially if someone specializes in one of the castings. The buttons in most sleeves are minty minty factory fresh. There are a few sleeves that have some surface rust to the outer edges. There are 10,000 Rear Board Beach Bomb buttons at 833 buttons per sleeve at 12 sleeves. Some sleeves are slightly shorter in length and some longer. On average around 660-800 buttons per sleeve of each casting listed."