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Thousands of button collectors from around the country are coming to Denver for the annual convention of the National Button Society Convention this weekend, and they’ll be mining through mountains of buttons — more than 500,000 buttons from 51 dealers.

They include exquisite antique buttons from 19th-century craftsmen made of tortoise shell, cloisonn茅, or basse-taille enamel, where the design is usually outlined in silver or gold.

The convention runs through Saturday.

For the uninitiated, it’s easy to fall down the button hole into a hidden world invisible to everyone except button enthusiasts.

That’s what happened to Jill Gorski when she went to a meeting of the , which started in 1968 to help people understand the historic and artistic significance of buttons, and is formed from a , from the Blue Spruce Button Club in Castle Rock to the Colorado Button Club in Parker.

“The minute I walked in the door, I was so blown away. I’d never seen anything that wasn’t plastic,” said Gorski, whose fascination triggered the idea to start her online business.

She’s now one of the experts in the field, and her book “Warman’s Buttons Field Guide” is a portable reference that lists more than 900 collectible, antique and vintage buttons.

When she starts talking buttons, she can’t stop.

“Women started wearing buttons in the mid-1800s when Butterick came out with his patterns for women,” Gorski said. (Tailor Ebenezer Butterick began selling sewing patterns in different, standard sizes in 1863, and revolutionized home sewing).

Before that, lacing and hooks closed women’s clothing, but once buttons were introduced, women became the primary button consumers. But buttons were around much longer than that.

“Some say they started with the French (buttonmaker) guilds around the 1300s, when buttons were jewelry worn on garments,” she said, describing them as a status symbol for the aristocracy.

Later, in America, “buttons were souvenirs on the battlefield during the Civil War,” she said, and “Army locket buttons made by the Liberty Manufacturing Company of Los Angeles were buttons with a little springs that opened to reveal tiny portraits inside.”

Gorski can trace the history of America through its buttons, from — who boycotted English buttons and made their own  — to inventors like Charles Goodyear, whose discovery of hard rubber launched Goodyear-patented buttons from about 1853 to 1872, and Leo Baekeland , who “created the first true plastic in 1909” and whose Bakelite buttons are now a collector’s delight.

Some button enthusiasts, like Gorski, amass buttons as an extension of other collections — she has a teddy bear collection, and “a humongous collection of buttons with bears on them.”

Others are competitive collectors, like Lewis Lombardi , a board vice president of the Colorado State Button Society who won four first-place awards at the organization’s annual show this year.

His collection of fish, anchors and ships buttons includes work by Bob Benson, an artist who creates elaborate buttons from vegetable ivory, a rare palm seed grown in Micronesia, and antique kimono button of a ship outlined in gold enamel that was designed by artisans who also made Japanese Satsuma pottery.

The National Button Society show is open to the public from 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Aug. 4-6, at the Crowne Plaza Convention Center, 15500 E. 40th Ave., Denver.