Here's How Much Your Old School Lunch Box Could Be Worth

Kids today don't know how easy they have it with those soft, malleable lunch boxes that squeeze easily into their bookbags. There was a time when we'd beg our parents for a cooler design on our lunch boxes, because the darn things were always stuck in our hands, too big and clunky to hide inside a backpack. The challenges of our early days were worth the struggle, though, because some of those bulky, cumbersome lunch boxes are now more valuable than all our schoolday memories combined.

The vintage lunch boxes worth the most money are the ones featuring colorful depictions of popular TV shows, movies, comic books, board games, and discontinued brands. Lunch boxes with "Star Trek," "The Jetsons," "The Lone Ranger," "Dudley-Do-Right," and various vintage Disney characters can be worth hundreds of dollars, while more obscure ones, such as "Pac-Man" and "Strawberry Shortcake" can also fetch a pretty penny. Other valuable lunch box designs include King-Seely Thermos Co.'s "The Munsters" box from 1965 which goes for between $1,000-$2,500, Adco's "Mickey and Friends" box from 1954 which goes for between $1,000- $2,000, and Aladdin's "The Beatles" box from 1966 which can sell for between $500-$1,500. Perhaps the most valuable lunch box of all is the 1954 "Superman" metal lunch box made by Universal Studios. It's so beloved that one auction in 2010 sold the lunchbox for nearly $12,000, while regular resale value can fetch between $1,000-$16,000.

To be considered vintage, a lunch box would need to be at least 20 years old (like these 14 vintage kitchen gadgets that no one remembers anymore), so if you pick up a brand-new lunchbox and expect it to be worth anything, you'll be sadly disappointed. Although it's worth noting that the condition of a lunch box does play a big role in its worth. Small marks and scrapes from use are okay, but any significant dents or damage will lower the value. If the original matching Thermos is included with the lunch box, that value goes back up.

Supposedly, the first character-designed lunch box was the 1935 Geuder, Paeschke & Frey Mickey Mouse-themed metal box, which has been known to sell for upwards of $2,500. From there, metal was a popular choice for lunch box designs until about the 1960s, when vinyl versions took over the market, and matching Thermos flasks joined the game. From the 1970s until about the 1990s, plastic lunch boxes decorated with animated characters and popular video games were all the rage. Beyond the polyester kind that are popular these days, there are compartmentalized bento boxes, or ultra-modern electric lunch boxes, which might be on the pricier side, but won't fetch you thousands of dollars the way some vintage lunch boxes can.