Reference Desk

Which 90s school supplies can you still buy new?

Two columns. Still made, buy new: Mead Trapper Keeper binders in retro prints, and I Spy and Miss Nelson Is Missing, still in print. Resale only: 1990s Lisa Frank folders and 1990s Lion King backpacks. Below, two bars compare a reissued Trapper Keeper at $18.39 new with a $120 vintage binder. — Trapper Keepers and the classroom picture books are still made, so buy them new; 1990s Lisa Frank folders and Lion King backpacks are resale only, and a reissued Trapper Keeper at $18.39 undercuts a $120 vintage binder.Illustration: LinkToLooks

Half of what a 1990s classroom ran on is still manufactured, and the half that is not has quietly become a collectors’ market. This page separates the two, because the difference is the difference between paying $18 and paying $120 for what looks like the same thing.

Still in production — buy it new

The Trapper Keeper is the headline here: Mead makes them again, in prints styled after the 1980s Designer Series, and they undercut most of the vintage asking prices while having rings that still close.

Item	Retailer	Asking	Condition
Mead 3-Ring Trapper Keeper Binder, 1" Round Rings, Animal	Office Depot and OfficeMax	$18.39	New
Mead 3-Ring Trapper Keeper Binder, 1" Round Rings, Shapes	Office Depot and OfficeMax	$18.39	New
New Mead Original Trapper Keeper Binder Retro Vintage Sty…	Poshmark	$23	New
Mead 3-Ring Trapper Keeper Binder, 1" Round Rings, Palm T…	Office Depot and OfficeMax	$18.39	New

On 30 September 2026 the CJ feed no longer returned these three Office Depot rows, so their $18.39 stands as of 2 September 2026; the Poshmark listing was still $23. Mead’s own store listed its Trapper Keeper binders at $14.75 to $19.29 that day.

Small tin buckets filled with coloured pencils and pens lined up along a classroom table. — Photo: “School Supplies” by nick.amoscato, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr

The classroom bookshelf, still in print

These are the ones people misremember as rare. They are not rare; they never went out of print. What is scarce is an early printing, and that is a different search.

Book or supply	Cheapest verified seller	Asking
Richard Scarry 'What Do People Do All Day?' book	eBay	$10
I Spy picture book	Galiano Island Books	$5
Miss Nelson Is Missing book	Amazon.com	listed, price on request
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom DVD	Amazon.com	$5

Resale only — the originals nobody makes any more

Both rows below are the 1990s articles. Current Lion King backpacks are still sold new at around $20 and are a different object — we separate the two in vintage or current?

Item	Cheapest verified seller	Asking
Lisa Frank rainbow unicorn folder	Mercari	$21
Lion King Simba and Nala backpack	eBay	$35

Last verified 2 September 2026: 4 listed offers re-checked against the CJ product feed (US advertisers) — 4 unchanged. Across 296 live US listings pulled that day, the cheapest was $1.49 and the median $34.39. Prices move; read them as the market on that date, not a promise.

One honest gap: Miss Nelson Is Missing! is in print at four sellers we verified and none of them published a price in the feed. We have linked the sellers and left the price column empty rather than quote a number we did not see.

What we would actually spend on

If you are buying for nostalgia rather than for a child: the vintage Lisa Frank folder is the only object on this list where the old one is meaningfully better than the new one, because the 1990s lacquered stock is genuinely different to look at. Everything else, buy new. A reissued Trapper Keeper at $18 does the whole job; a $120 vintage binder with tired Velcro does not.