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I was browsing through the Atlantique City antiques and collectibles show last month when an opal and diamond bracelet I couldn't possibly afford caught my eye.

Stepping back to examine it in better light, I brushed against some items in the next booth that caused a tinny clatter. I turned to apologize and then I saw them, a pile of lunch boxes, an item that appeared and reappeared throughout the show.

There were Popeye lunch boxes, school bus lunch boxes and Star Trek lunch boxes. Some were new, some nearly new and some still contained the matching Thermos clamped inside. Others had seen a bit of use and were rusty and a few were even banged up a bit.

I didn't buy the bracelet, an exquisite item offered at $1,000, that contrasted sharply with those lunch boxes, which seemed tacky by comparison.

But anything collected with such enthusiasm must have some redeeming characteristics and I questioned Cindy Truce of Springfield, Mass., a collector of antiques and, of course, lunch boxes.

For her, as with many collectors, the fun is in the chase, and Truce said she originally started collecting cowboy things.

"When I reached the point when I wasn't able to find much more, I sold my collection piece by piece," Truce said. She ended up with one lone unsaleable lunch box. "The Hopalong Cassidy was left over, probably because at the time it was not as desirable as others," she said.

So she kept Hopalong and then there was an indication a few years back that lunch boxes were coming into their own. "I began by adding a Gunsmoke and then a Roy Rogers and then I allotted them their own shelf downstairs," Truce said.

She firmed up her affinity for lunch boxes when she saw a price guide last year and realized they had become a major collectible.

"People relate to these lunch boxes. There is a lot of nostalgia connected with them. And people in their 20s cannot afford to add the older, more expensive toys to their collection, so they are buying lunch boxes," Truce said. Others will look for one like they carried to school and some will focus on a theme such as cowboys or the space program or astronauts.

Truce said she looked a long time for a Howdy Doody lunch box and found it at the Lunch Box Collectors Show held last June in Tennessee.

She said bargains can be had at flea markets, but "you can also pay up to $1,200 for a lunch box."

During dealers' day at the convention in Atlantic City, she was offered $900 for a lunch box but turned it down. One of her favorites, it was a dome-shaped box with the theme "Hometown Airport." The design had little airplanes flying overhead with the workers down below.

The prospective buyer said he had "every dome lunch box made except for this one." But it was "one of her favorites" and she turned him down.

Truce said condition has much to do with the value of a lunch box, but with this comparatively new collector's item, it is difficult to assess the worth of any lunch box.

Those at nearby booths exhibiting items of fine art were disheartened to hear of a mere lunch box commanding that handsome price of nearly $1,000. And personally, I would have preferred the opal bracelet. But when it comes to collectibles, the fun, it seems, is all in the chase.

Collectibles, with advice on where and how to find items that collectors value, appears every two weeks in At The Shore.

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