6 of the Most Valuable Vintage Cereal Boxes

For much of the mid-20th century, cereal boxes typically cost less than a dollar. Yet if you’d kept certain boxes around from that time or earlier, you might be able to net thousands of dollars by selling them today. 

Just like certain vintage Beanie Babies and Pokémon cards, specific well-aged cereal boxes have acquired a great amount of value over the years. Devoted cereal box collectors buy these for various reasons—the nostalgia factor, because they’re fans of the person featured on the box, to support a charitable cause, or simply for the thrill of it. Here are six expensive vintage cereal boxes that made quite the stir at auction.

1. 1935 Lou Gehrig Wheaties  
2. 1961 Post Cereal
3. Quaker Quisp Cereal
4. 1969 Beatles Nabisco Rice Honeys Box
5. 1984 Mr. T Cereal
6. Tony Hawk Frosted Flakes

1935 Lou Gehrig Wheaties  

Baseball legend Lou Gehrig was the first-ever athlete to appear on the back of a Wheaties box in 1935, a tradition that has since become a time-honored rite of passage for star athletes.

There are precious few Gehrig-emblazoned boxes left today, meaning that one of these can net quite the profit. That was the case for a box that sold for $7,680 at a 2019 auction, blowing its estimated worth of $1,000 to $2,000 out of the water. Fortunately, eBay has plenty of convincing replicas on sale for more accessible sums, such as $7. 

1961 Post Cereal

In 2025, an unopened 10-pack of Post Cereals sold for a whopping $21,600 at auction. “The preservation of this unopened "Post-Tens" pack is most improbable. This is the first example we have ever offered!” the REA site reads. The cereals' value was certainly bolstered by the fact that they came with three Post Cereal baseball cards on the bottom of the package: #4 Mickey Mantle, #47 Pete Runnels, and #157 Charlie Neal. 

These minute cereals hit stores in the 1950s and remained popular into the 1960s, but were eventually discontinued. Today, though, they can fetch quite a pretty penny, particularly when valuable baseball cards are part of the deal. Other Post Cereal packages with baseball cards attached have sold for $15,375 and $11,400, according to REA.

Quaker Quisp Cereal

In 2016, a box of Quaker Quisp sold for $2,100 on eBay. These cereals hit stores in 1965 and continued to be sold until the mid-1970s, when they were slowly phased out. However, they have occasionally re-emerged on shelves over the years. Still, vintage boxes are especially beloved among cereal box collectors.  

1969 Beatles Nabisco Rice Honeys Box

The Beatles’ influence knows no bounds, and has even extended to the realm of vintage cereal box auctioneering. In 2014, a Beatles-themed Nabisco Rice Honeys Box sold for a whole $1,438 at auction. It also came with six Yellow Submarine rub-ons, which are similar to temporary tattoos.

The rub-ons were released in 1969 as a tie-in to the band’s movie Yellow Submarine and were only sold for a short time, which certainly helped make this vintage package deal into a collectors’ item.

1984 Mr. T Cereal

You might remember seeing Mr. T as the antagonist in the movie Rocky III. In the 1980s, he also starred in an action series called The A Team and played himself in a self-titled cartoon series as well. The Mr. T brand was thriving at that point, which might be why a cereal box bearing the actor’s cartoon visage hit shelves in 1984.

One box sold for $550 at a 2024 auction, even though it sold some signs of wear and tear and had some creases and stains on it. Still, it came from Mr. T’s personal collection and was accompanied by a certificate of authenticity—though unfortunately, or perhaps quite fortunately, none of the cereal it had once held was still in there.

Tony Hawk Frosted Flakes

Also known as Birdman, Tony Hawk is definitely skateboarding’s biggest star. He’s also the founder of the Skatepark Project, which has donated over $13 million to skateparks around America over the years.

In 2025, a box of Hawk-themed Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes—which hit stores in 1991 and continue to be released in limited-edition batches—sold for $512 at auction, with all the proceeds going to Hawk’s foundation. Adding appeal to this particular box might have been the fact that it came directly from Hawk’s personal collection.

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