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Old metal lunch boxes, the kind kids used to tote to school, have become quite the meal ticket as collectible items. The utilitarian vessels for food and student status have evolved into objects prized by adults.

"A few years ago, lunch boxes were at garage sales and flea markets and weren't thought of as antiques," said Sam Turner, 55, an antique dealer who has collected metal lunch boxes for 30 years.

"Now they are worth serious dollars and starting to show up in antique malls." Turner, of Gladstone, said lunch boxes were collectible now because "they were banged up, beat up and thrown away." Also, the first price guide was published in 1988, showing people how much the once-lowly boxes might be worth.

For Dave and Mary Stone, a retired Lee's Summit couple, lunch box collecting has become a new and nostalgic pastime. Since December 1992, they have collected about 170 types, depicting characters they recognized and also ones their children enjoyed.

"When my husband retired a year ago, I found a book in Greenwood about lunch boxes," Mary Stone said." I recognized a few our daughters had. I did not realize there were so many." So many indeed. According to The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Metal Lunch Boxes , considered the definitive source book by collectors, about 450 metal lunch box motifs were created.

Production of metal lunch boxes stopped in 1985 with one featuring Sylvester Stallone's Rambo character, the book said. In Florida, sales were banned in the early 1970s at the urging of a group of mothers, who argued that school children were hitting each other with the metal boxes. Several other states followed suit, and eventually lunch boxes evolved into safer, plastic versions, the book said.

Turner said tobacco companies made metal lunch kits in the 1920s and 1930s. But Aladdin Industries Inc. made a breakthrough in 1950 with its Hopalong Cassidy model, featuring the popular cowboy movie star.

Today, prices for the old boxes fluctuate monthly. Condition (metal lunch kits commonly rusted), scarcity and age are the main determinants of value.

But popular appeal is another factor. After the Jetsons movie, a mint condition box and Thermos fetched thousands of dollars, according to The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Metal Lunch Boxes . And after actor Michael Landon died in 1991, prices soared for "Bonanza" and "Little House on the Prairie" boxes, the book said.

Thermoses that sometimes were included with the lunch boxes also are collectible. They are priced separately, usually at 40 percent to 60 percent of the value of the corresponding lunch box, Turner said.

Carol Rice, who works at Liberty Square Antiques, said boxes emblazoned with Disney or comic strip characters have been most popular. In addition, Turner said, boxes displaying westerns or early space characters are prized by collectors.

Dave Stone said his new hobby was not like other types of collecting, such as stamps.

"There are a fixed number of lunch boxes, but they keep putting new stamps out," he said.

Stone also has collected Model A Ford tools and has restored antique cars for 30 years. But Mary Stone said she never was interested in collecting anything until she discovered metal lunch boxes.

"It is like a trip down memory lane," she said.

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