Web Site News

Site Map

Contact Us

Home

In third grade, carrying one was cool. In seventh grade, only a brown bag cut it. So at 26, what kind of office reception does a Lost in Space model get?

"Everyone was tripping out," said car-loan officer Roger Beck, recalling the first time he took his vintage 1967 dome-model lunchbox to work. "They thought it was neat. Most of them remember the show."

Old lunchboxes are Beck's bag. During the past three years, he has collected 320 boxes, 640 including duplicates.

Lunchbox heroes line the shelves of a display room in his home like an anniversary episode of Hollywood Squares. Disney characters and the ever-evolving Barbie are old standards. Western and space adventurers marked the 1950s and early '60s. (Remember Tom Corbett, Space Cadet?) The '60s brought sitcoms (The Munsters) and psychedelia (The Beatles' Yellow Submarine). Disco fever hit the lunchrooms in the '70s with Bee Gees Maurice, Robin and Barry Gibb each earning a box.

"Somewhere between the baby bottle and the brown bag, you were what you carried," said Scott Bruce, author of Lunchbox - The '50s and '60s and The Official Price Guide to Lunchbox Collectibles. Collecting them is "collecting your childhood. . . . It takes the sting out of getting old."

Lunchboxes have appreciated more than 100 percent a year in the past three years, Bruce said.

Until the price guide came out, Beck didn't think much about the value of his collection (somewhere between $7,000 and $8,000). But now he can't find a box for much less than $30.

"I had a lady at a flea market who sold them to me for $5 every month for the last three years," he says. The antiques dealer has since picked up a price guide, and the last box Beck wanted had a $60 tag.

Renewed interest in old characters inflates the prices. "You can't touch a Batman lunchbox for less than $50," said Lance Dobson, a dealer at the Atlanta Flea Market and Antique Center.

Beck's older brother Ken started collecting about four years ago, planting a seed for a family rivalry. Now Beck, his sister, father and three brothers compete for prized pieces.

"When Roger got The Jetsons, he had to call them right then," said his wife Dawn.

Metal lunchboxes began to be phased out in the early 1980s in favor of plastic lunchboxes, said Joe Alcan, product manager at Aladdin Industries in Nashville, Tenn., one of the largest manufacturers of lunchboxes. The last full-metal box was the 1987 Rambo.

So what would a man with a first-edition Hopalong Cassidy and a snarling Stallone want next?

"I'd like to get a Soupy Sales," Beck said.

The limited-edition, vinyl model is one of about 200 "blue chip boxes" fetching between $300 and $700, Bruce said. It was discontinued when The Soupy Sales Show went off the air in the mid-'60s.

Comments or Suggestions?