He stopped smoking, but kept collecting

Sure, he used to indulge the habit, but it wasn't the nicotine that turned Harry Kraemer into a cigarette collector. The pretty packaging took care of that.

As a child growing up in Scranton, Pa., Kraemer, now 83, frequented the neighborhood pharmacy, where intricately designed cigarette packs filled the shelves.

"It got me so excited," he said of his first purchases as a teenager. "They were so colorful, you know what I mean?"

Kraemer started collecting in earnest in the 1950s, when cigarettes cost 17 cents a pack. Today his son Steve reasons that at an average of $10 per pack, the collection of 7,178 cigarette packs could be worth $72,000.

The great unknown is whether anyone with that kind of money is willing to part with it for a 20th-century history of the cigarette -- or whether Kraemer and his family even want to sell it, says Steve, who lives in St. Louis Park.

And in case you were wondering, there's a reason that Kraemer, who lives in an Eagan retirement home, is even around to consider it: He quit the Pall Malls decades ago.

Kraemer, who spent his career in banking and finance, purchased thousands of packs on his own and traded with other collectors to amass his stockpile. Some of the oldest pieces are from the 1930s, including packs of Chesterfield, Snooty and Happy Hit cigarettes. He owns a circa-1913 pack of Reynos.

When a manufacturer changed the packaging, Kraemer would buy one of everything to complete the set. So a new wrapper might necessitate buying kings, menthols, 100s and more.

Even his kids got involved after they grew up. Steve Kraemer said he and his sister and three brothers -- Marilyn in Eagan, Harry in Chicago, Paul in Boston and Tom in New York City -- regularly checked their areas for unique cigarettes, as well as places they traveled for work and pleasure.

"Our spouses have had to be very patient and understanding with the five of us," Steve said, "as cigarette-searching has sometime encroached on vacations and, in my case, a honeymoon 20 years ago that brought us to Jasper in Canada and then Vancouver, Victoria and Seattle."

Through it all, Steve said, his mother, Patricia, has taken it in stride. But she wasn't thrilled, he said, with the four wall-mounted cases -- each holding about 250 cigarette packs -- and seven footlockers used to store the collection.

She also was probably not so excited, Steve said, "when my dad would out of the blue say, 'I want to take a drive to Buffalo, N.Y., to see what they have out there.'"

"It all depends on the condition," Stephens said, noting that the market for old packs of cigarettes is just like any other that deals with antiques. And because cigarette packs were meant to be tossed, "as far as I'm concerned, a pack that's over 25 years old is an antique."

A pack of Homerun cigarettes, similar to a pack that Kraemer owns, was recently listed on eBay for $150. But most packs aren't worth nearly that much.

Harry Kraemer has long been a member of the Cigarette Pack Collectors Association, which started in 1976. Richard Elliott, who runs the group, thinks the Kraemers will have difficulty finding a buyer for the entire collection. The organization has about 200 members who concentrate on finding rare packs, not buying thousands of them at once.

Elliott, who lives in Kennebunk, Maine, said a collection of similar size to Kraemer's sold about a decade ago for $30,000. The purchaser bought the collection for a museum. But Elliott and Stephens advise Kraemer to sell the most valuable pieces in online auctions.

Kraemer estimates he drove 30,000 miles some years in pursuit of his hobby.

And then there's all of the time that Steve Kraemer and his siblings spent hunting down prize items for their father.

"If it sounds bizarre, I guess it was," Steve said. "But, bottom line, it made our dad happy, and it was, at least at times, a fun collection."

Staff writer Randy A. Salas contributed to this report.