Cannibal culture

Part 4

by Ellen Barry

Bubble-wrap babies

One thing that everyone agrees upon is that Mr. Lunch Box left the market permanently transformed. Thanks to media coverage of trends like the one Bruce started, Americans have turned into master hoarders, convinced that every baseball card and Matchbox car will send as-yet-unborn kids to college. Vintage-jeans dealers bellyache that everybody and their mother thinks they have a thousand-dollar pair of jeans, and antique dealers plaintively request that consumers resume throwing out their old stuff, the way they used to.

But now, gearing up to dominate tomorrow's market, comes the most awesomely savvy group yet: a wave of younger collectors who -- glimpsing the infinite potential for secondary markets -- have never taken the bubble wrap off their toys. This phenomenon is so widespread that Rinker has devised a corollary to his rule, to allow for the distortion of the collectibles market by supply-side overload in the near future.

This means that young people regard their toys as potential collectibles from day one. Bruegman, in Ohio, has seen this transformation at close range. "I have kids that call me and ask me if I have a cut-off date [for the minimum age of collectibles]. I'm thinking, 1971. They'll say, `Oh, this is old. This is 1994,' " says Bruegman. "I must get three calls a day like that."

The threat to the market is one problem; another is that kids are becoming mini futures dealers. Koenig, for one, thinks it's time to stop the madness.

"The collecting mentality has been instilled in them," says Koenig. "We used to trade baseball cards and stick them on the spokes of our bicycle wheels. Now they keep 'em in mylar with non-acid paper. I write editorials telling everybody to rip open those blister packs and play with their cards. Come on, these are staid hobbies."

Koenig's concern is not entirely humanitarian. His own business, which banks on the development of nostalgia, will someday be stymied by the '90s. So much of our zeitgeist is borrowed from another time -- the old clothes (polyester?), the old celebrities (Tony Bennett?), the old aesthetic (boomerang coffee-tables?), the old cocktails (martinis?), the old icons (yellow smiley faces? mushroom candles? disco balls?). All this could make life hard for vintage dealers 10 years down the line. After all, it's hard to bring back a trend if you never really had it to begin with.

Part 5

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