Antiques & Collectibles: Lunch Boxes

Those of us who chose to cart our bologna sandwiches to school in a simple brown paper bag (with our name printed on the front, of course, and maybe a smiley face hand drawn by mom) should be seriously regretting it now. Yes, it was much less cumbersome to hold onto a bag than it was to try to juggle a metal lunchbox and thermos along with the pile of books that went home with us each night.

But now, to be honest, I’m seeking them out. Maybe you’re one of those boomer adults who has since bought a metal or even a plastic lunchbox to display in your home. More than any other collectible, lunch boxes seems to define the pop culture of the time. You can’t see a lunch box and not be swept back in time.

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve bid on a metal Bobby Sherman box because one of my friends was the vice president of his fan club as a teenager. It has always fallen out of my price range. In the end, I found a great poster of collectible lunchboxes, and Bobby was featured. I’m still looking for the real thing though…like any good collector.
Remember at the beginning of the school year, and you were given the option of picking out that one lunchbox you’d carry for the year. It was like a fashion statement. You had a budget of a mere $5-10, but it would say quite a bit about you. Your reputation depended on that choice. All that for the $5-10. Now, let’s put that in today’s context. A mint condition metal lunchbox with lunchbox featuring the Fab Four Beatles can sell for upwards of $600 for the lunchbox and $200 for the thermos. Now, how many of them would you have grabbed for $5 way back when?

Many of these memory minders were manufactured by Aladdin Industries out of Nashville. Many other made boxes as well, but they either specialized in traditional “working man” boxes - -the old plaid or gun metal grey kind, or they manufactured in a particular part of the country. ADCO Liberty out of New Jersey, for example, only created boxes for two short years and specialized in things from that time period: The Lone Ranger, Howdy Doody, Mickey Mouse and Davy Crocket.