A rare Sex Pistols ‘Pretty Vacant’ promotional badge made by Better Badges of London, around the 1977 release of the  single.

As Better Badges founder Joly MacFee told The Guardian in 1976, ‘After initially lifting the “anarchy” design I gained a good working relationship with Glitterbest (Malcolm McLaren’s management company) – ie I paid them off with badges…Then Jamie [Reid] brought in the God Save the Queen art and Virgin later ordered a ton.

This is one of those rare original badges, an example of which is included in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Just under 2 1/4″ in diameter, in near excellent condition, with light oxidation to the back.

From the Victoria and Albert Museum website: During the punk and post-punk period of 1976 to 1984, it was fundamental to wear your allegiances, political or musical, on your lapel in the form of the button badge. Better Badges, run by Joly McFie, was the small business leader in manufacture of punk buttons, of which this is an example. He started a stall in 1976 at a Ramones gig at the Roundhouse, London, and became a fixture of the scene with a mail order service too. Jamie Reid used McFie’s process cameras to produce artwork for single sleeves for the Sex Pistols, which were subsequently turned into badges by McFie. This badge utilises the same poster design by Jamie Reid for the release of the Pretty Vacant single, July 1977. The bus artwork, featuring the destinations ‘Nowhere’ and ‘Boredom’, is typical of Sex Pistols desire to be seen as being, and representing, angry young men with no purpose.
Jamie Reid’s cut-and-paste aesthetic developed from his interest in radical politics. His artistic style developed while at art college in Croydon, where he was influenced by the ideas of the avant-garde political group, the Situationist International. The political slant to his art was aroused by the May 1968 Paris student riots, which inspired fraternal protests organised by Reid at the Croydon College of Art. These were directed with fellow student Malcolm McLaren, later to become the manager of the Sex Pistols.