Button, Button Who's Got the Button?

I know we have no inflation (HA!), but when did buttons, little old plastic buttons get so expensive?  I'm working on a couple of craft projects and I need buttons to complete them.  Now I have a can of buttons that I inherited from my mother-in-law, but they're mostly dark and don't really match what I'm doing so I've ordered some buttons  from Amazon, and they turned out to be very pretty, but mostly too small for what I want to do.  So I ordered from etsy and they're fine, but slow getting here and rather expensive with the shipping thrown in.  Then I went to ebay and ordered some, and they pretty but not cheap.  We're talking plastic here so I don't understand why they cost so much.
It use to be that when clothes got old you cut the buttons off before throwing the clothing away.  Well I don't throw clothes away unless I've destroyed them, I donate to Goodwill instead.  So I need to find a cheap source of buttons.