Brady Bunch Lunchbox set - $938

It's that time of the year again, back to school! New books, a new bag, and of course a new lunchbox set decorated with your childs favorite characters... Did you know lunchboxes are collectibles as well? A nice example of a collectible lunchbox is the 1970 Brady Bunch lunchbox set pictured here, which recently sold for $938.

This item is another example of how two collecting niches come together. There is the lunchbox collector, who might consider this a rare and beautiful lunchbox, and there is the Brady Bunch character collector that collects everything related to the Brady Bunch. In this article we will focus on the lunchbox collectible aspect, but let's start with some facts about the televsion series The Brady Bunch.

The Brady Bunch was a television series about a couple that marries to form a new family. Not your usual family though, since both Mr. and Mrs. Brady each had three children from a previous marriage. The idea for the Brady Bunch was born in 1966, when Sherwood Schwartz wrote a pilot episode formed around his idea. None of the major networks wanted to pick it up though. By 1968 however, the time was ripe, and ABC started the production of the show. The first episode aired in september 1969, and after four seasons, the last episode of the original Brady Bunch series aired in march 1972. Several spin-offs were created, like a cartoon about the Brady kids, movies and mini-series. A nice Brady fan and collectible site is Bradyworld.com.

Back to our lunch box. Although lunchboxes were available long before, the lunchbox concept of the kind we are all familiar with did not start until 1950. In that year, a company named Aladdin Industries started applying Hopalong Cassidy decals to its lunchbox and thermos sets. With the popularity of the Hopalong Cassidy character, the Aladin set was an immediate hit and lunchbox sales soared from 50.000 to 600.000 per year. For a couple of years, Aladdin industries had the lunchbox monopoly and successfully so. In 1953, however, American Thermos joined the market. They did not use decals on their boxes, but produced fully lithographed boxes that were very appealing to the eye. American Thermos sold over 2.5 million of their first Roy Rogers (turned down by Aladdin) lunchbox set in the first year! The 1960s really got the market going, with many popular TV characters appearing on lunchboxes. Lunchbox history does not stop there though. Detailed histories can be found on the sites mentioned below.

There's plenty of lunchbox collecting sites out there. One of the nicer ones we found is The Lunch Box Pad, a nicely designed site with lots of historic information, pictures and appraisal and value information. Another site is Lunchboxcollector.com, which has similar information. In both cases, be careful when assessing the value of a lunchbox you might have because the values mentioned sometimes seem to be low when compared to actual sales prices on sites like Ebay. To give you an example, the Brady Bunch lunchbox set discussed here is shown to have a value of approximately $330, yet it sold for $930 as we can see above.

Vintage PEZ Dispensers - $4,500

Once again we found you an absolutely amazing treasure. This one took us by surprise more than ever! What we have here is a vintage 1970s PEZ dispenser set depicting the characters Asterix, Obelix and the Druid from the well-known comic. This set of seemingly ordinary PEZ dispensers recently sold for the unbelievable amount of $4,500! We've said it before, but we had no clue that PEZ dispensers, the candy holder toy we've all had the pleasure of playing with when we were kids, were collectible let alone could have a significant value. PEZ and its dispensers are still a popular item, with billions of pieces of PEZ candy per year devoured in the USA alone.

The word PEZ was formed from the German word 'Pfefferminz'. PEZ was invented in 1927 by a gentleman named Edward Haas, a candy manufacturer / seller from Vienna, Austria. The PEZ mint was invented to be a breathmint for smokers, who could freshen up their smoky breath with one of these mints. In the early days, PEZ users would typiclaly carry the mints around in a tin can.

PEZ dispensers as we know them did not appear until 1947. Since the PEZ mints were aimed at smokers, the PEZ dispenser was modeled after the common cigarette lighter. Not until 1952, when the Haas manufacturing company expanded its market to include the United States, did character heads appear on top of the dispensers. Having done their market research, the Haas company decided to target children and place Disney character's heads on top to make the product irresistable to children. Another thing that changed was that the PEZ candy itself became available in a variety of fruit flavors. For a more detailed history, check out this Yankee Grocery page.

Every year, 'PEZheads' gather at a variety of conventions to buy, sell and trade PEZ, talk about PEZ and meet other collectors. The PEZ company actively supports the collecting world on their web site, and is known to give away collector's items at these conventions. Very nice! There also is the bi-monthly PEZ Collector's News newsletter, to which you can subscribe for $19 per year. As with most collectibles, there is a plethora of books on PEZ history and collecting available.

Checking Ebay for PEZ, we've seen many dispensers that sold for hundreds of dollars each. If you have a PEZ dispenser and need to get an appraisal, check out the price guides and books, or contact one of the many collectors out there. It might very well be worth it!

We love this new treasure and will be keeping our eye out for those dispensers!

Western Electric Model 302 Telephone - $378

This rather ordinary looking phone was recently sold for the handsome amount of $378. Not a fortune, but no pocket change either. To the untrained eye (including ourselves), this looks like a simple telephone made of plastic, which by all means, it is. So what makes it special?

This vintage telephone is a Western Electric model 302 phone. These phones were produced by Western Electric from 1937 to 1948, so the production run was not that long. People who had a phone in those days did not own the phone, but leased it from the phone company on a monthly basis. The Western Electric 302 model was designed by a man named Henry Dreyfuss, a celebrated industrial designer in the 1930s and 1940s. Dreyfuss was the first president of the Industrial Design Society of America.

Originally, the body of the phone was made of cast zinc metal, but later models were made of thermoplastic. The bulk of the model 302 phones were made in black, but towards the end of the production differently colored phones were produced as well, and model 302 became available in ivory, bronze, gold, silver, blue, rose, green and red. The model pictured above is the red thermoplastic version. Colored models of this phone are thus harder to find, and combined with the relatively short production run, it becomes obvious why this vintage telephone might be worth $378 to someone.

Most people who collect telephone related items focus on vintage telephone sets. The example we discussed here is by far not the most expensive antique or vintage phone there is, but we included it since it looks so mundane and simple. Most people would not think of this phone as an item having a value, let alone take it somewhere for an appraisal.

There are plenty of websites where collectors exhibit items from their collection. Good examples are Vince's Calvacade of phones, where you can find a good amount of Western Electric phones, The Old Telephone Man, who not only exhibits part of his collection, but who also sells parts and repairs vintage phones, and the Cyber Telephone Museum, which has a lot of stuff on older phones. For a good bit of telephone history, vistit Privateline.com's pages.

Antique Soda Bottle - $6,251

Once again we were surprised at what we found. The bottle pictured here sold for $6,251 the other day. Before you think 'who would pay such an insane amount of money for a bottle, let's dive a little deeper into the history of it.

This bottle is an antique soda bottle from about mid-nineteenth century; it is over 150 years old! It was made by the company Gardner and Brown, as in Philip Gardner and Christopher Brown. The pair were in business together for only two years, running a mineral water manufcaturing facility in Baltimore. Thus, besides it being an old bottle, it is also rare since it was only produced between 1846 and 1849. On top of that, most of the samples found today are green, which makes this puce-colored bottle even more special.

The shape of the bottle is distinct, but not specific to these manufacturers. Many soda bottles of this age have this shape, referred to as the Torpedo shape. The aim of the design was to prevent bottles from being kept upright. Guess why? Well, in the early days of Soda bottling, a cork was used for closing the bottle. The cork had to stay moist to prevent shrinking, which would cause an imperfect seal. The simple solution to this problem was the design of a bottle that simply could not stand upright.

While looking up some information on antique bottles and bottle collecting, we were overwhelmed with the detailed information available on bottle collecting. Bottle collecting literally comes in all shapes and forms. People collect soda bottles, beer bottles, bitter bottles, pharmacy bottles, and so on, and items in this collecting niche can range from a couple of dollars to tens of thousands (!). If you don't know anything about antique bottles, you would walk right past that $ 5 garage sale item, worth a couple of thousand on the collector's market. Here is some information to get you started.

A very nice and detailed site we found is The Historic Glass Identification & Information website, maintained by U.S Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management. This guide will keep you busy for a while! A collection of Baltimore bottles can be found here. Then there is Antiquebottles.com, which has extensive info on all kinds of antique bottles. Last but not least, a good bit of soda history can be found here. An extensive amount of books and price guidesis available online as well, go

Computer Space coin-op - $3,175

This item would fit in any retro-design furnished area of your house. We think it looks awesome, and would love to have one (if only it were not such an expensive collectible...). This wonderful piece of retro-electronica is a coin-operated (coin-op for short) computer game from 1971 called Computer Space. In fact, it was the first ever commercial coin-op arcade video game!

This sample sold for $3,175 on Ebay, but in the past we have seen others sell for more. As with all auctions, the final price depends on the amount of interested bidders, and the desperation they feel to obtain a specific object.

Computer Space was designed by a man named Nolan Bushnell. After he had seen the game Spacewar in action on a PDP minicomputer, he conceived the idea of a stand-alone computer game machine. He sold his project to the company Nutting Associates in 1971, who also hired him to lead the development team. It is estimated that about 15oo of these machines were produced and sold, since production was stopped quickly due to little demand and the fact that Nutting Associates did not believe in the product. Due to this limited production run, Computer Space cabinets are quite rare. The housing around the internals was made of fiberglass, and came in various colors; yellow, green, red and blue (we love the blue one!).

Nolan Bushnell continued to develop ideas and games, and formed his own company in 1972. Atari was born. The first machine developed by Atari was the world-famous Pong arcade machine. Later in the 70s, with small television based consoles selling like hotcakes, Pong would grow out to be the most popular computer game of its time, and for years Atari would dominate the video console and game market.

The are many other sites dedicated to video game collecting and history, we suggest use your favorite search engine to get to them ;)

(intermezzo) Nice reviews - priceless

We recently received some nice reviews. 'Fruey' posted this review on the 'Let's have it' blog yesterday, and we got an 83 out of 100 on Blogexplosion last week. We were also listed as the blog of the day on the Christian Activism News blog on August 6th, and as blog of the day [ well, that's what we make of it ;) ] on Land-o-Links on August 10th. Thank you all for your kind words and nice reviews, it's an inspiration to bring you more interesting treasures in the days to come.

We'll keep up the good work.

Vintage Thunderbird Casino Chip - $660

We keep discovering new treasures. Casino chip collecting is a collecting niche that is totally unfamiliar territory for us, but let's see what we can find out.

Nevada was the first state to legalize casino gambling, in 1931, and for a long time remained the only state where casinos were legal (the next state following suit was New Jersey in 1978). Before and after the final legalization of gambling in Nevada, small gambling houses were plentiful in Las Vegas. The first large hotel-casino to open in Vegas was El Rancho, opening its doors in april 1941 (it was destroyed by fire in 1960). Several others followed, one of them being the Thunderbird, which opened in 1948. The Thunderbird was renamed several times during its lifetime, and was finally destroyed in 2000, to make place for something bigger and better. The chip pictured above is a vintage $5 chip from the Thunderbird casino.

We honestly do not know why this specific chip would be worth $660 to a collector, but as usual with collectibles, rarity and condition play an important role. There are several casino chip dealers out there, like OldVegasChips and CasinoRarities. Browsing through their lists of chips for sale, we noticed there are several chips listed for thousands of dollars. One nice example in the OldVegasChips hall of fame is a 'second issue' $100 chip from the Flamingo casino, last seen on the market in 1999, selling for $8750(!). The Flamingo, opened in 1946, was famous for its mob connections, with mobster Bugsy Siegel being one of the owners. Bugsy was killed by a mob hitman in 1947, making Flamingo chips from the first year of operation extra rare and desirable.

Not only vintage casino chips sell for a lot of money. On Ebay, we have also seen non-vintage chips sell for similar amounts because of their rarity, like this limited edition (250) Sammy Hagar Hard Rock Casino chip (2002) selling for about $1300. These are probably harder to find in the wild though, after all they are limited editions.

For more info on the history of gambling in the United States, visit this page. The University of Nevada, Las Vegas, has an interesting site for their Center for Gaming research (the El Rancho history article linked above is here too). For even more information on casino chips, there is the casino chip collecting webring, and the ChipGuide. To our surpise several chip collecting books and priceguides are available as well.

For a good understanding of the rarity and value of vintage chips, you would have to know more about the history of Las Vegas, and the history of the major hotel-casino establishments that followed El Rancho. After getting to know a little more on the history of Las Vegas, you can browse the sites of the aforementioned casino chip sellers, which have a good lot of pictures online, allowing you to study the chips.

Contrary to what the ads and commercials say, what happens in Vegas does not always stay in Vegas, so go dig up those treasures!

Suffragettes Postcard - $494

Postcard collecting - also called Deltiology - is very popular. It is easy to start, and allows you to grow a significant collection fairly quickly, simply because there are zillions of postcards out there, most of which are very affordable. One of the most attractive aspects of postcard collecting is that it allows you to collect specific themes, selecting only those cards for your collection that depict a certain subject.

Postcards have been around since 1870, when they were introduced in Hungary. In the few years thereafter, the rest of Europe followed suit, as did the United States. The details regarding the history of postcards are manifold, so for today's post let's just mention a few facts.

Old postcards with writing on the front are normal. The person writing on the front was not deliberately trying to destroy the image; the U.S, postal regulations did not allow for writing on the back of the card until 1907. The back of the card was only to be used for the recipient's address. Cards published before 1907 are now categorized as cards from the 'undivided back' era (1901-1907). The era prior to 1901 is the 'Private Mailing Card' era (1898-1901). Cards from this period are recognizable by the 'Private Mailing Card' printing on the back of the card. The card above is from the 'Divided Back' era (1907-1915). This period is also called 'the Golden Age' of postcards, since it was during this time that postcards became immensely popular and postcard collecting started growing as a hobby. The first world war ended the Golden Age, because many of the world's postcards were printed in Europe, mainly Germany.

Not all cards from the Golden Age sell for $494. In fact, very few do. So why is this card special? As we noted before, people collect in categories, and for some of those it is harder to find cards. Also, within specific categories, rarities exist. We will write more on that in later postings, but to give you an example, in Christmas card collecting, vintage cards depicting Santa Claus in clothes that are not red, are rare and sought after.

Back to our card. Reading the message on the card will clarify why this is a special card:

The Women's Suffrage Party of New York City - We pray you to remove your women constituents from the disfranchised class of paupers, lunatics, criminals and idiots...

This card is another classic example of cross-over collecting niches. Postcard collecting meets Women's rights historical documentation collecting. The history of women's rights in the United States is long and hard, and this card is from an era when the fight was at its high point; in 1910 the first large national suffrage march was held in New York, with 3000 attendees.

For a nice introduction to postcard history, as well as many samples of vintage cards, visit the Post Card and Greeting Card Museum. An extensive amount of information on the Suffrage movement can be found on Winning the Vote.

There are plenty of books on postcard collecting available online. If you're interested in books on the Suffrage movement, you can find those as well.

Antique cigarette rolling paper - $1,704

When we saw this, we went "what the hell?!". First, we thought these were a couple of fake auctions. We're still not sure...

These are two packs of vintage cigarette rolling paper from the 1930's. The People's Tobacco Co. pack on the left sold for $1,300, and the Kentucky Leader pack on the right sold for $1,704. Several other apparently rare packs vintage rolling paper changed hands in the last few weeks, most going for several hundred dollars. Wow, who would have known!

Tobacciana is the collecting niche that deals with everything related to smoking; advertising, cigarettes, cigars, labels, ashtrays, lighters, tobacco trading cards and so forth. Apparently, rolling paper can be a hot commodity as well.

We have tried to do some research on specifically this rolling paper and the rarity of it, but we could not find much useful information, and finding a good site about tobacco history and related collectibles in general wasn't so successful either. One nice site is the Cigar Museum, with a collection of articles about the history of cigars and several exhibits.

Tobacciana definitely is a collecting niche we need to observe more, to get an idea of what's out there and why certain items are valuable. We'll keep you posted!

Admittedly not a very informative post, but we had to expose this hidden treasure!

Old Steiff Teddy bear - $8,839

What a cute little Teddy Bear! And my gosh, what a cute amount of money it sold for! First of all, let's establish the fact that there is a lot of Teddy Bear collectors out there. There even are several musea around the world, like this one in Naples (USA) or this one in Stratford-upon-Avon (UK), or the famous Izu Teddy Bear musuem in Japan, which among others is home to the famous Teddy Girl, a Steiff bear that sold for 110,000 British pounds (yes, you read that right) in 1994.

Now that we mentioned Steiff, you might have guessed that the Teddy on the right is indeed a Steiff bear. It is a rare center seam, white Teddy Bear dating to approximately 1906. It has a blank button in its ear. The center seam in the Teddy Bear's head makes it rare, since only 1 in 8 production bears had this center seam. The 'button in ear' is characteristic and trademark of all Steiff bears, and since the button was changed several times over the years, it allows for more or less accurate determination of the production year of the Teddy Bear.

Steiff is one of the big names in Teddy Bear history - if not the name. Steiff was founded in 1880 in Germany, but the company, under leadership of its founder Margarete Steiff, did not start producing Teddy Bears until 1902, when Steiff created the first Teddy Bear. During its 125-year existence, Steiff became one of the most popular manufacturers of Teddy Bears, with world-wide appeal. Many of Steiffs vintage toys and stuffed animals, as well as many of their modern-day limited editions, are highly desirable collectibles and collectors 'fight' over unique pieces. The most ever paid for an antique Steiff Teddy, was about $195,000 (yes, you read that right again) for the 1906 Steiff Teddy 'Happy', sold at auction during the 2002 Steiff Festival, a yearly recurring event for Steiff enthusiasts.

There is an ongoing debate about who created the Teddy Bear, however, since at about the same time that Steiff produced its first Teddy Bear (1902), a man named Morris Michtom was selling home-sewn Teddy Bears out of his shop in New York. He was so successful with this, that his part-time Teddy selling storefront was transformed into the Ideal Toy Company.

Teddy collecting has become more and more popular in recent years. As such, the value of the vintage teddy bear has increased significantly. If you're not sure what you Teddy bear might be worth, get an appraisal. Christie's even has a yearly auction for just Teddy Bears. There's Teddy Bear related sites all over the place, Google for 'Teddy Bear history', and you'll find a great deal of them. There's also a lot of books about Teddy Bears, their history and collecting them, many of which are available online.

Frederick Douglass newspaper - $1,292

At first sight, this is just another old newspaper, consisting of only a couple of pages, all yellowed with the edges of the pages being very fragile, but in relatively good condition. Looking closely, we find that this is quite an old paper, published in 1859. Still, a price of $1,292 seems a little steep, even for such an old newspaper.

The title of the paper reveals why this is a valuable item, and which collectors might be interested in it. The paper is a valuable piece of Black Americana, as well as of Americana in general.

Frederick Douglass was a man born into slavery in 1817. After a successful escape in 1838 he became active in the Abolitionist movement. In 1845 he published his well-known autobiography titled Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. It was a huge success and was reprinted 11 times within three years after its publication. In 1851, Douglass merged his Northstar newspaper with another Abolitionist paper titled the Liberty Party Paper, to form the Frederick Douglass Paper.

The Frederick Douglass paper was publised until 1860, so the sample on the that sold for $1,292 was one of the later ones. Mr. Douglass died in Washington in 1895. Today he is known as the foremost African American abolitionist in antebellum America, and is regarded to be the first African American leader of national stature in United States history. The Wikipedia has more detailed information, and you can find a selection of books on Frederick Douglass at online retailers.

Vintage Barbie doll - $2,000

Last weekend we were at a cousin's birthday party, and of all the gifts that were unwrapped, one in particular made all the other children go "WOOOAAHHH", after which they scrambled around the big pink box to get a better view. It was a Barbie set.

Barbie has been around since 1959. She was the brainchild of a lady named Ruth Handler (a Mattel co-founder), who invented the doll after seeing her little daughter play with her own dolls, pretending them to be grown-ups. Most dolls of the days were modelled after babies or children, so Ruth Handler thought it might be a good idea to create a teenage fashion doll. She named her doll Barbie, after her daughter.

The Barbie 1959 #1 model ponytail Barbie (product #850), clad in black and white knit swimsuit, is on the wishlist of every vintage Barbie collector. Barbie #1 was available as a blonde and a brunette, and had a small set of accessories: white sunglasses with blue lenses, black open-toe shoes, and hoop earrings. The #2 Barbie is almost identical, in fact the only difference is that the #1 had holes in her feet to fit her on her doll stand. This model was produced through 1961.

The sample in the picture above sold for $2,000, as a 'bare' doll without accessories or box. Samples in perfect condition (with no blemishes to paint like nailpolish, brows and eyes), with accessories and box, can sell for multiples of that. The Barbie collectibles niche is large, because of Barbie's worldwide appeal. We have seen single pieces of rare Barbie clothing sell for hundreds of dollars, but those are for the die-hard collectors that already have everything else.

A good site to start your Barbie research is barbiecollector.com, a site maintained by Mattel. It has a good portion of history, information for collectors, as well as a nice doll showcase with many pictures. Just Google for private collections and dealers. Alternatively, there are quite a few books about Barbie available online, which can help you learn more about the history as well as values of vintage Barbie items.

Civil War / Slavery Photograph - $1,275

An old, yellowed photograph, an image captured in the 19th century depicting a bunch of soldiers in front of a building, with wagon and tree in the foreground. The composition of this photograph truly bad, and it the condition is not perfect. So why did someone pay $1,275 for this picture?

Upon closer inspection, we can see that the soldiers in the picture are Union soldiers. American Civil war memorabilia and pictures are a specific niche in collectibles. The building in the background, is not just a building. The sign reads "Price Birch & Co - Dealers in Slaves". This company was one of the largest firms selling ‘surplus’ slaves from the Upper South to the Mississippi valley. Slavery, being a sad chapter in American history, is yet another niche in collectibles, part of what is called 'Black Americana'. Personally, we do not wish to refer to people by the color of their skin, but that's what the collectibles niche is commonly referred to. Combining these two niches in one photograph, with the two subjects being so closely related, increases the value of the item, since there will be more people interested in it.

Several good books on civil war memorabila, as well as guides for black memorabila are available through your favorite online retailers. Books like these are an investment, but they can definitely help you in recognizing and picking out bargains. There is plenty of antiques and collectibles dealers specializing in either subject (use Google to find). Browsing their catalogs will also give you a good idea as to what is collectible and valuable.

As for antinque and vintage photographs, there are many different subjects of that sell for a lot of money, simply because the depicted scene fits into a specific collectibles niche. Do some research into what sells, and why, then re-check that box of old photographs you found in your grandmother's attic.