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Larry Aikins says he thinks he could leap tall buildings with his vintage 1954 Superman lunch box. He had three of the mint-condition boxes and recently sold one for $5,500.

Larry Aikins can hardly contain himself when it comes to lunch boxes. He doesn't recall having one as a kid. In fact, he got his first one when he was over 40. But now he has more than 3,000 of them.

And with a collection as rare as his, these boxes aren't about to come face to face with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. To Aikins, they are a slice of Americana, worth collecting, protecting and showcasing.

The 55-year-old Athens, Texas, man began collecting metal lunch boxes, to decorate his workshop, about 10 years ago right around the time the last kit slid off the assembly line. A pastime of stockpiling the old boxes with bright colors and pictures has become a full-time obsession.

"They have beautiful artwork. When I put them on the wall they really stood out. They have a lot of things that capture you," says Aikins, who has written the book on collectible lunch boxes.

Irresistible objects

He knows what it is like to be caught, held captive by the gleam of the rectangular boxes. He's considered an expert on the art of "lunch boxing." His book, "Pictorial Price Guide to Metal Lunch Boxes and Thermoses," is the bible for "boxers," those who also crave the vintage mini-suitcases of childhood.

A former construction worker and maker of custom cabinets, Aikins has become something of a broker for boxes that are hard to find and are in mint condition. He doesn't sell from his private stock, which is carefully preserved in a specially built storage area. However, he does have extra boxes that he puts on the market from time to time during trips to antique shows.

Popular guy

Through his book, the shows and conventions, other collectors find him. They haggle over prices. They talk lunch boxes. They want to know if their kit (box and thermos) is valuable. They hunt him down.

"They call you `The King,' `The Man' and all sorts of things. But I'm just a lunch box collector," he says modestly.

When you consider the thousands of lunch boxes he has, "just" a collector doesn't quite do him justice.

All the boxes pictured in his book, originally published in 1992 and updated in 1994, are from his personal collection.

Huge collection

There they are. Nearly every modern-era rectangular metal lunch box made between 1950 and 1986 428 of them. There's more, much more.

Also shown are more than 20 individual thermoses and nearly 100 other types of metal boxes including domes, Japanese lunch kits and workman-style boxes.

Experienced boxers know that the metal dome lunch kits are some of the most attractive. They tend to have the best artwork, with a shape that displays it better, according to Aikins. But they are also usually expensive and difficult to find.

Aikins' collection mostly comprises rectangular metal lunch kits familiar symbols of American culture.

It was a 350-box collection that snared Aikins in the mid-1980s, before lunch boxes would become hot collectibles, when you could find scores of them at rummage sales, holding baseball cards or serving as surrogate cash boxes.

There they were in an antique store outside Abilene. He bought the whole lot, many of them 1960s boxes, for $1,200. Those first boxes cost him in another way.

"I got that old silent treatment again. Six hours of silence," Aikins says of his wife, Pat.

"A few years later, I sold two boxes and gave her the $1,200 back." After that big score, he concentrated his efforts, honed his hunting skills. During the next few years, Larry Aikins would boxhunt on Saturdays and make monthly trips to the Dallas area. He would also scour Houston, where he once lived, traveling a regular route of at least 35 stops at flea markets, thrift stores and garage sales.

In those days, he would return home with several lunch kits usually obtained for 25 cents to $1 each.

"He would take off at six in the morning and I wouldn't see him all day," Pat Aikins says. Finding a rare lunch box can bring on a case of jitters, even paranoia. Larry Aikins once knocked down a few racks of clothing trying to make a clean getaway with three boxes in a thrift store.

Heady stuff

After he bought an elusive Howdy Doody box for $7 (estimated value $450), he says he had to sit down before he fell down.

Now, Aikins' personal collection surpasses 2,500 mint- or nearmint-condition lunch kits treasures protected inside bubble wrap and cardboard boxes. The number climbs to more than 3,000 when you add in the "extra" boxes he sometimes offers for sale.

He estimates the worth of his collection at $150,000 to $200,000. That's reason enough for the precautions he takes. His private collection is tucked away in an undisclosed climate-controlled storage facility.

He's not sure how many boxes fill the floor-to-ceiling shelves or are packed into the cardboard cartons. His extras some shiny, others dented or scratched with a little rust around the edges reveal a life of drops, bops and flings in the hands of children.

Soaring worth

"It's funny how the values have just taken off," says Pat Aikins. "It's getting to the point now that we don't find them out and about. We get them from other collectors. People call us when they have something."

Short supplies, of course, increase demand. The metal boxes are no longer manufactured. King Seeley Thermos produced the very last metal lunch box in 1985, depicting an armed, musclebound Rambo, according to Aikins' book. Modern lunch boxes got their start in 1950 with another gun-toting hero, Hopalong Cassidy.

In 1993, Aikins bought a longforgotten Hopalong prototype bearing the original watercolor design of artist Robert O. Burton. It was found in 1985 inside a locked storage cage at a facility in Nashville, Tenn., during remodeling.

The cage was being torn out and the contents thrown away. The original "Hoppy" box was discovered.

It is his most treasured box "the grandpa to all of them," Aikins says reverently. The prototype for the first modern lunch box and thermos, it is the rarest of finds.

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