Common Items Most People Don’t Know Are Valuable

4. Lunch Boxes

It's hard to imagine a childhood without a branded lunch box featuring our favorite princesses or heroes. Even our parents likely carried proudly adorned Flintstones or Lone Ranger lunch boxes to school, typically made of metal, while ours were, naturally, made of plastic. Nowadays, these lunch boxes have become valuable collectibles, with some fetching a significant sum. One collector estimates that certain lunch boxes are selling for as much as 10,000 times their original retail price. Of course, not every lunch box is rare or iconic enough to command such prices, but most vintage lunch boxes in good condition are valued at least as much as their initial cost, if not more.

Vintage lunch boxes dating back to the 1950s and 1960s naturally command the highest prices, as they are the oldest and the least abundant due to the inevitable destruction and loss over time. However, even newer brands like Polly Pocket and Lisa Frank carry a nostalgic value that has propelled their prices upwards as collectibles. It is widely believed that the most expensive lunch box ever sold was a mint condition 1954 Superman lunchbox, placing Superman at the pinnacle of yet another list of the most expensive items, alongside the priciest comic books. If you happen to possess a cool lunch box from your childhood, it's advisable not to toss it away casually.