Milking the Latest Collectors’ Craze for Fun and Profit : Hobbies: Milk caps are touted as ‘year’s newest trend’ at Studio City show. Promoters say the bottle tops may one day rival baseball cards.

The sign hanging outside the Sportsmen’s Lodge hotel in Studio City Sunday made a gallon-sized promise: “This year’s newest trend.”

Was it collecting old Elvis hotel keys? Mangled manhole covers? How about belly-button lint? No way.

It was milk caps.

That’s right, milk caps--those waxed cardboard thing-a-ma-jobbies that protected the tops of your grandmother’s milk bottles way back when.

Now, thanks in part to a Hawaiian schoolteacher, these flying milk caps are about to become the hottest rage for collectors since baseball cards. At least, that’s what the promoters of an event billed as the “First National Milk Cap Show and Tournament” would have us believe.

“Baseball cards have been on the top for too long, they’re getting old. People need something new to collect,” said Randy Wood, a promoter for the event. “These things can be as big as baseball cards. The kids just need to buy into the concept.”

Buy into, indeed.

On Sunday, a dozen marketing companies spread their wares on tables at the hotel, trying to accomplish a feat toy makers try each year--to mass-market a fad. Milk caps! Trade ‘em! Fling ‘em! Pay loads of money for ‘em!

The hobby started around the turn of the century in Hawaii, and two years ago experienced a rebirth and spread to the mainland. The rarest caps from the early era sell for more than $500.

Now there’s even a game associated with the caps, where kids sit at a game board and flip their caps until a winner is declared. The game was started two years ago by teacher Blossom Galbiso, who wanted a fun way to take her kids off the streets.

Some of the first caps were called POGs, after a Hawaiian dairy that produced passion fruit orange juice. Now the game also carries the name.

Galbiso’s little game took on such a life on the islands that within a few months, the teacher had raised $58,000 for local charities. Then the real money-makers got involved.

In Hawaii alone, more than 500 million caps have been sold to 100,000 collectors since 1991, promoters say. On the mainland, another 50,000 to 100,000 wild-eyed milk-cap collectors have begun to collect the half-dollar-sized discs.

Now, it seems everybody and their brother is getting in on the milk-cap act. There’s more than 100,000 different logos, promoters say, including McDonald’s, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, NFL Football, Pepsi and DC Comics.

There are Disney dinosaur caps. Even the Bible Belt is marketing caps with slogans such as “Jesus Saves” and “The Big Guy Is on Your Side.”

In fact, just about everybody is releasing a proprietary milk cap, says Robert Rea, a Hawaiian businessman and owner of Ray’s Trading Co., which carries the slogan, “Catch the Hawaiian Milk Cap Craze.”

There are regular milk caps for flipping. And there are even collectors’ editions, kept in protective cellophane-and-glass picture frames, selling for hundreds of dollars--a tactic to turn both adults and children into milk-cap maniacs. Most collectors sell a packet of six caps for $3.

“People are making millions on these things,” Rea said. “I mean, there’s only a million people in Hawaii, and people were making six-digit profits there within six weeks. I predict a $100-million milk-cap industry in the United States this year.”

As he talked, the milk-cap sellers milled about the showroom. Some dealers gave away samples as starter kits. The next time, of course, the milk caps would cost.

Over in one corner, kids sprawled on the floor and flipped caps while others watched.

“My brother sent some of these caps over from Hawaii and my girls both thought they were fun,” said Carmelita Pascua of Long Beach. “Now they have about 100 each.”

In the showroom on Sunday, everybody was smiling. The salesmen were smiling. The kids were smiling. But the promoters smiled the most as they entertained the CNN television cameras. They said they plan to launch a nationwide milk-cap tour.

Think of the possibilities, they said. School districts could raise money to dig out of their budgetary caves, give teachers raises, uplift American education--all through milk caps.

But there was one frowning face among the smiles.

Patricia Ford, a Hawaiian model with her own calendar, sat at a table and frowned. Sure, she had cards showing her own bikini-clad body. But fewer prospective buyers for her wares showed than had been expected.

“I don’t think they’re going about this the right way,” said the 24-year-old model, wearing a tightfitting dress slitted high and with a plunging neckline. “They say they’re doing this for the good of schools. But I don’t see any schools here.”

She scanned the near-empty room and sighed.

“Well, at least I got my appearance fee.”

Outside, even the parking valets joked about the milk-cap collectors inside.

One raised his right hand and rubbed his thumb and forefingers together in the international gesture for cash.

“Hey,” he said, “people will try to sell anything. It’s a recession out there, you know.”