Collectibles shows are terrific places to have close encounters of the cereal kind, particularly if you wear a T-shirt or sign splashed with the slogan "FLAKE ME, BABY!" to alert passers by to your avocation-personal problem. At the Atlantique City show in March every year, you might find a Mr. Fox hand puppet, a Pink Panther Flakes Cereal Box, or a bunch of cereal newspaper ads to make the trip worthwhile. The annual Chicago Toy show is famous for Kellogg's Cereal material, while the Indianapolis Advertising show is a reliable source for early die-cut cereal signs. Small flat items like decoder badges, plastic rings, and Mr. Waffles pocket comic books are usually found inside the glass-topped gem cases strewn across dealer tables. Often little loose items such as Cheerios airplanes, Captain Video spacemen, monster pop rockets, and King Vitaman hologram rings are harvested from the junk boxes dealers often stash under their tables. Great finds for a dollar or two may be bagged here-if you don't mind crawling on your hands and knees, and maybe having a Marlboro stubbed out on your hairpiece.
Caches of never-assembled cereal boxes called "flats" are popping up all over from industry sources such as printers, package designers, manufacturers, and their ad agencies. If you prefer a pristine package to an old one, collecting flats or package proofs may be your cup of tea. Once a flat is assembled into a box (bent and glued with rubber or neutral ph cement), it's worth about the same as an old cereal box that once fed a hungry family of four, particularily if the box is rare. Some collectors throw up their hands and never touch a box unless it actually held cereal once, while purists shudder at the sight of such damaged goods. (Let's pray that this bitter rift between boxheads and flat freaks doesn't tear at the hobby's intestines for too many years to come.)
Beginning Cereal Box collectors should be on the look out for laser reproductions passed off as the real McCoys. If a rare box you'd expect to sell for hundreds of dollars, such as a Yellow Submarine Wheat Honeys Cereal Box, is shrink wrapped and selling for a price that's too good to be true, it probably is.
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