Cannibal culture

Part 3

by Ellen Barry

The strange tale of Mr. Lunch Box

If there is one man who first recognized how much there was to exploit, it was Cambridge's Scott Bruce, who burst into the collectibles world as Mr. Lunch Box in the mid '80s. He knew nothing about antiques, but he knew his generation (Bruce is now 41), and he set out with the express purpose of creating a collectibles trend out of thin air.

He spent six months scouring junk shops for the right item -- something scarce enough, and evocative enough, and cheap enough to make his fortune. He looked at pedal cars and cap guns and board games, and then one day, he happened upon the perfect grade-school relic: a Jetsons lunch box. He knew he had something. But when he turned to the elder statesmen of the collectibles world, they thought he was crazy. You can't just create nostalgia, they told him.

The gospel of the antiques world included something called Rinker's 30-Year Rule, which postulated that nothing became a legitimate collectible until 30 years after it was produced. The rule was based on the idea that people don't begin buying back their childhood until they are nearing 40. Lunch boxes -- many of them only 15 or 20 years old -- didn't fit that paradigm. Bruce didn't let it worry him.

"They just didn't get it," Bruce says. "At that point -- this was 1986 -- lunch boxes were limp-wristed, they had no cachet. I mean, there was no market."

But Bruce's skill was less in identifying a trend than in manufacturing one. He developed an engaging schtick, founded a magazine called Hot Box, made innumerable talk-show appearances, planted articles in the trade magazines, and spread relentless front-end hype. He would send out press releases saying "Lunch Boxes are White-Hot!" and the articles would appear like clockwork weeks later. In fact, all Bruce did was take old antiques-market practices and put them to work. He found them eerily reliable.

"That's what was so disconcerting about the whole thing. It happened exactly according to plan. It was like having a depressing dream, and waking up and realizing that it had become reality," he recalls. "It went from really nothing -- $10,000 or $15,000 in trading a year -- to a $15 or $20 million market that attracted Bruce Willis and Rob Reiner and a squadron of F-16 pilots out of Ellsworth Air Force Base who used to pack their lunches in the wing compartments."

Hey, presto, a boomer icon! Bruce's success -- a $250,000 profit from an investment of $13,000 -- became mythic in the collectibles world, to the chagrin of those who told him his idea would never fly. Harry Rinker, who heads the Institute for the Analysis of Antiques and Collectibles and authored the 30-Year Rule, admits that Bruce pulled off a coup. "There's an inherent faith that you can beat the system now. Lunch boxes are a perfect example. Scott Bruce is one of the greatest market manipulators of all time," says Rinker.

It was the beginning of the end for the 30-Year Rule, some say. Rinker's protégés, such as John Koenig, suggest that the 30-Year Rule has turned into a 20-Year Rule, a 10-Year Rule, and, sometimes, a No Rule at All Rule.

"I've seen absolutely instant nostalgia for a few years now," Koenig says. "There is no rule -- not until I think of one, at least. The traditional cycles of the antiques business no longer apply," he adds. "The market is completely out of whack."

Part 4

Ellen Barry can be reached at ebarry[a]phx.com.