Bea: If you were informed that there is a local group in Virginia, that might be the only one. Not every state has a state society but many have local clubs. It is very useful to join a local club and attend their meetings. You will learn more from other collectors than any book. It is a great idea to specialize your collecting rather than to do what so many of us did when we started, which is buy every button we could get our hands on. In a very short period of time, most collectors find they are climbing up the collecting ladder and really want the finer buttons. I would concentrate on finding buttons where buttons are a specialty, like right here on eBay. We have a fantastic button category at our disposal as you know. And attendance at regional, state and national button shows is really fun and a great way to find buttons at competitive prices. When you get to California there are many button clubs you can join out here. We have the most button collectors of any state and there are often small regional button shows plus our State show in April this year (last weekend) in San Jose, CA. There's also the Western Region Button Assn. (WRBA) which holds a pretty large show in Reno, NV each October. People love this show and it brings collectors and sellers in from the "western region" of the US, Alaska, Canada and Hawaii. We see folks at this show who cannot attend other larger shows including most National shows, so it's a good one to attend in this part of the country. I hope you'll be in the Los Angeles area, then you can join our club. I'm President and we have a small but fun group. -Carol C-
