Australian Badge Guide Books

We began publishing the guides in 2012 because such guides exist for coins, stamps, high-worth/high quality medals and medallions, but not for fundraising buttons, badges and pins. This is not right – not historically, not commercially as the price of badges is no longer the poor cousin. Often the information about fundraising buttons, badges and pins is scant to non-existent, or worse incorrect. Badge collectors deserve better. A lot better. The Guide also includes pricing information, for I genuinely believe that Australia’s fundraising buttons, badges, and pins are under-valued and a neglected field of study, generally, within numismatics. Each badge guide book features full-colour images of each known badge combined with any relevant information such as technical details and historical references to the badge and/or fundraising event. Australian Badge Guide books have been written by a passionate badge collector and Army veteran, with extensive military, literary and research experience.

In the late 1800s – thanks to innovations such as cheap colour printing on tin, the invention of celluloid (a proto-plastic) and photographic reproduction technology – the world witnessed an explosion in the availability of fundraising buttons, badges and pins. It appeared that whenever someone needed to raise funds, a badge was minted for the occasion and could be purchased from pay-day vendors on the main streets of the various capital cities and regional towns and cities. The world was a different place, socially. In Australia, as in other countries, there were fund raising badges for various charities, such as Legacy, Red Cross, Salvation Army, R.S.P.C.A., Australian Comforts Fund, appeals for widows and orphans, and for the deaf, blind and crippled; importantly the local community supported these fundraising activities. Badge collecting became a hobby for many children.