Listening to the voice mail comments about the things that got you into science-fiction has brought back a lot of memories.

If you’re a certain age, you may recall that one way you could declare your fandom for a certain show, movie or property was with your lunch box.

And while many of our parents have long since consigned our lunch boxes to the great recycle heap in the sky, there’s one man who is collecting them. His name is Dan Zieja and he has 3000 lunch boxes.

Zieja owns Melodies and Memories, a music store in Detroit with 3000 lunch boxes from across the years.

“I’m stopping at 3,000,” Zieja says. “I’m not collecting metal lunch boxes anymore because there are only about eight ever made that I don’t have.”

Zieja, 54, claims he’s got the largest collection on public display in the United States. Maybe even the world.

But just how many is 3000 lunch boxes?

“If I went from kindergarten through 12th grade and took a different lunch box to school every day, I’d still have something like 500 left over,” Zieja tells Wired.

If you want to take a trip down memory lane, Wired has a gallery of some of his lunch boxes. Did you own any of them?