One man’s trash is another’s treasure, but cereal boxes? You’ve likely thrown out a thousand of these things after polishing off your Chex or Cheerios, and now we find out that some of the boxes are worth a mint – they’ll fit right next to a classic lunch box and a beer can.
You may think it’s the older boxes that command the highest prices, but not always. A Kellogg’s Sugar Pops box from 2009 has reached $161, but the highest earner is an unopened box of Nabisco Shredded Wheat from 1966, which brought in a hair over a grand.
Cast-Iron Doorstops
In 1894, John Hubley founded the Hubley Manufacturing Co. in Lancaster, LA. Initially, the company made wooden toys, but by 1909, they had moved into cast iron and added decorative items such as door knockers and the very popular figural doorstops. Today, doorstops with original paint regularly bring up to $400, but rare shapes can bring thousands.
A Hubley giraffe doorstop recently sold for almost $11,000! Check the back for either a three-digit pattern number or the word "HUBLEY" to know if you have the real deal.
Old Coins
Well, of course, coins are worth money; that's the whole point. But some coins – rare, misprint, what have you – can be worth way more than you think. In 2007, antique dealer Jeff Bidelman of “Rare Collectibles” was asked to look through an abandoned house by the late owner's daughter, and he managed to find a buried treasure: a collection of 200-year-old coins that ended up being worth more than $200,000, hidden in a hole in the wall of the house.
Coins seem to be on the way out as inflation makes them less and less useful, but you might want to keep them around.
Concert Posters
When it comes to nostalgia, nothing beats an original concert poster, and the bigger the name, the better. Appraiser Helaine Fendelman advises that framed posters are more desirable and bring in the higher end of the $100-$1,000 range, although those of bigger headliners may bring much more at an auction.
For example, a poster for a 1966 Shea Stadium Beatles concert sold for $137,000 earlier this year.
Equestrian Paintings
Folk art and equestrian paintings reached mainstream popularity in 19th-century England, but horses and their riders have added proper flair to gallery walls all over the globe for hundreds of years. This category is popular for experts and art lovers alike, from formal jockey portraits to action-filled depictions of traditional fox-hunting excursions.
Large oil paintings with original ornate frames garner much higher values, while smaller examples in simpler, more primitive frames bring less.