Hello friends! So I wrote recently about getting a button/pin maker and how I've been having fun handmaking pins. I draw my designs on the little paper circles that came with the kit, which I have been quickly running out of (they gave me fewer of those than the other parts). There is a circle cutter in the kit, but it's very awkward to use. So I thought, easy enough, I will find a circle paper punch of the right size and get one of those. I have a couple of large paper punches (one is a heart and one is a square) that I use in scrapbooking and I've had for years, so surely there's a round one in the right size, right?

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight?

No. Well, not really.

I found circles in 1", 1.25", and 1.5"; or alternatively, 16mm, 25mm, 38mm...

What I need is 1 3/8", or 35mm. Suspicious.

I tried searching under every search term I could think of, and found the same mysterious gap in sizes everywhere. Temu, Amazon, Etsy, Ebay ...everybody had an assortment of paper punches for around $5 give or take, that just magically skipped over the size I needed. And then i started searching with terms like "button maker round paper punch," and I think I discovered why.

It's a fucking collusion conspiracy. Look at this shit:

screencap from Amazon

$56. And that's the cheapest one, some of them are well over a hundred dollars. This is to make 1" buttons (so the paper is slightly larger because it wraps around when you press it into the form), so it's not like it's an uncommon size. All the paper punches labeled as specifically for button making, are hella expensive. $85, $125. I'm guessing that you can't find cheaper round shapes in ANY of the button sizes, because they want people to spend out the nose for this special size. That is more than I spent on the button machine itself. For a paper punch.

Well, fuck that noise, I was on the hunt now. I'm not falling for your damn price collusion. I hunted around online for probably an hour or two, until finally I found one. One. Used. Discontinued. Sold originally under scrapbooking supplies, just like my other ones. But no longer made.

screencap from eBay; yes it is really round underneath despite the square on top, they showed the underside

I put it on my watchlist, and waited until the next day. Sure enough, like a lot of sellers, they offered me a discount (20% off), so I snapped it up. It still cost me $20, but that's better than $56. Fuck you, paper punch conspiracy!

So did I spend $20 I really shouldn't have on something not rent and electric bill? Yeah. But I can feel victorious about it, dammit. 😄 I have defeated The Man. The Paper Punch Man. 😂

Alive and victorious! 😁

Thank you for reading and have a wonderful day! 💜