MREInfo.com

Hi All – I’ve been lurking this forum for some time now, but have never posted.

Question: Are the old brown-pack MREs valuable/collectible? I’ve seen info from various sources that they 1)are, and 2)are NOT, and needless to say, I’m confused…

Thanks,
Jim

hello Jim!
and welcome to this forum!

yes old brown bag mres can be "valuable" to some colectors
it depends on the packing dates and producer.
and collectible? i would say yes,we are a few hardcore collectors of brown bag
mres and mre items here on this forum

so for the rigth man the rigth mre can be worth a bit.

what mres do you have ?

cheers ken,norway

Hi Ken, and thanks for the welcome.

I'll dig out the cases and let you know this week. I think at least 1 case is still sealed -- if so, should I open it to get menu info?

Jim

Welcome to forums jim! All you need to do to prevent having to open a case is go on the mreinfo homepage and on the left side click on MREs then click on menus and scroll down until you find the MREs from 1990s. If you click on a year it will bring up what each MRE menu contained for that year.

Jim,

Definitely do not open a sealed case if you're looking to sell it at any point - it is worth a good deal more sealed. The problem I (and I assume many others) have with collecting loose brown-bag MREs is the lack of date stamping on the bags themselves. The items inside are date stamped, but in most cases you don't want to open the item so you can't be sure what year it's from. During the 80s and into the early 90s, the menus barely changed year to year so just about any dark brown MRE has a half-decade long window - for example if you have a #6 Frankfurters, it could be from 81 through 87 and there wouldn't really be any way of knowing without opening it.

All you would need to know from your case is the production year in order to know what menus you have. Take a look at the MRE Menus page to match up the Date Packed and find out what's in there. It can be written as DATE PKD, DATE PACKED, Date PKD/LOT, etc. The pack date is NOT the same thing as the Inspection date (written as INSP/TEST or INSPECTION/TEST). The dates could be written as MM/YY like 10/89, DD/MM/YY like 04/12/97 or as a four digit number YDDD like 8234. The four digit dates are a bit more ambiguous but the case will help figure out the year. For instance 8234 would mean the 234th day of a year ending in 8 - so 88, 98 or 08. The inspection date is almost always 3 years beyond the pack date and usually has at least a two digit year. So if the 8234 case has an INSP date of 08/91 you know it's a 1988.

One last trick for seeing how old the case is, is the type of case you have in general. Flat cases were in production up through I want to say 1994, then the bigger cases we're used to today took over. They had an outer sleeve until 2000 (I think) then the cases began getting an extra layer of cardboard inside instead and they did away with the sleeve.

I hope this helps with figuring out what you have! If you're confused feel free to post a picture of the dates on your case and we'll tell ya what you have. As far as value goes, it depends on the year, the condition, etc. I'd probably only pay a few dollars each for loose brown-bag MREs, but a case from the right year I'd pay quite a bit more for. Lots of us here are attempting to fill gaps in case collections so you never know!

hello again

yes cases sealed are much more collectible than opened.
but lose packs are also interesting,but deppends on menu
and producer.

the sleeves was in use until 1996/97.
another trick to find what year the case was made: in the end of the case
where the black moon is located there is a lot of numbers and one place says:DLA and 87 or son on.
indicating the year of the case.

cheers ken,norway

WoW! Lots of info, guys. Thanks.

I should have more info on these MREs by the end of the week.

Thanks again. BTW - I was in the Marines at a time when C-Rats were the meal of choice, and, frankly, I liked 'em...

Jim

Thank you for your service Jim! I too was in the military (army national guard) at a point in the '80s when we were still issued MCIs, we called them c-rats but an uncle of mine constantly corrected me, "those are not c-rats, you guys are spoiled, you'd have hated what we had to eat!" Actually I was a medic/tracked ambulance crewman so we did not have to hump the cans everywhere we went, and I also enjoyed them, especially the chicken loaf and candy discs. What was your occupation in the USMC?

Hi Ration - I was 0300 with a 2d of 2111 (I think that was it...). That's small arms repair.

It's a long ways back to 1966...

Well... It looks like several (all Sopakco) cases were "misplaced" during my last move (1992). All that's left is a couple of cases of non-real-MRE Sopakco M-Packeds, some loose M-Packeds and a few ragged brown bag original individual meals.

On the bright side, I just sampled two M-Packed meals and found that - even though they're dated 8300 (average) they still taste fine. I assume they were made about 1998, and 13 years of proper storage (60 degrees or so) hasn't seemed to hurt them.

I wasn't brave enough to try the applesauce, because it was REAL dark. Smelled fine but...

So, it's a false alarm. Sorry, Guys.

Jim