Attendance Buttons at Expo was the solution in 1997 when the Henry VIII hotel required a means to identify paid attendees at the show so that the parking lot attendant would allow them out of the parking lot without paying. While they are no longer required to get out of the parking lot at the Renaissance, the buttons are still used to verify that attendees have paid when entering the show floor.

The USPS logo was on all buttons as they had been paying the cost of the buttons under their advertising budget but that ended in 2019. The buttons were designed by a mail carrier named Scottie. while we don’t know Scottie’s last name, he was a key contributor who deserves note in the history of Expo.  Scottie was a mail carrier out of one of the post offices in north St. Louis.  The USPS found that he had some artistic talent and gave him an unofficial job of designing special postal cancels for events and shows in St. Louis, like Expo.  Scottie would take Tom Minor’s cachet design, develop the USPS cancel and show buttons, then have them created.  Scottie was said to have used only MS Word in his design of the cancels, which anyone who has used MS Word would know could not have been easy.  Scottie created all the cancels for the show until 2010, when he retired from the USPS.  Thanks for your contributions to the show, Scottie!

Penney Kols and Tom Minor have created them since 2010.