Similar. We did these in I think first grade and then one of the parents was supposed to hold onto them for however many years.

We were supposed to get them back in like 20 years except you know the logistics of that are insane between people moving, teachers retiring, and a bazillion other things.

The world before 2000 was quaint. Everyone thought youd stay pretty local and community would persist.

Most people do stay pretty local. Community does persist. However there have long been plenty of exceptions. Those exceptions are not things you can know ahead of time.

20 years after first grade is the worst. It is very common to be gone to a college far away at that time, and then return. Also first grade - odds are the kids won't care even if they do get everything back.

I suspect this depends a lot on the culture, which itself likely varies not only by country but the kind of hometown we're talking about. Where I grew up, a smaller blue-collar city, it was expected of people to move to another (bigger) city to study and work, and remaining in your home town was considered failing. The idea of somebody returning after college is even more incredulous, even though there were quite a few roles in the industry requiring university level education.

To extend the anecdote, I saw this similar sentiment in many people who had grown up where I moved to study. So what I viewed as success or moving up in the world, they considered failing. So it doesn't seem that rational to me, but it's certainly real.

And now finally, living in a different country (which of course makes me very non-failing according to my hometown's criteria), it's an entirely different story: I've never in my life have had as many colleagues who were born, raised, educated, and found employment within the same 50 kilometer radius. And they're all perfectly happy about it.

I have no big point to make here; your comment just stirred this realization into words. I guess I'm wanting to say that these thing vary a lot, and its hard to generalize.

There are not many people living in those smaller blue-collar cities.

I grew up in an exurb of a larger city, and most of those I grew up with live close enough to where they grew up that they meet in back in the home city every weekend to be with friends and family. The larger point is most people already live in a metropolitan area and remain in that area. It might be a different city within it, but still the same area.

I'll guess in your case while most kids did live the town you grew up with, most moved just a few hours away to a city. As opposed to many hours away to a city in a different state.

> The world before 2000 was quaint. Everyone thought youd stay pretty local and community would persist.

As someone whose childhood extended into the pre-2000 era, this statement feels confusing. My childhood involved a lot of friends moving away, and a steady number of new students moving in.

The number doesn’t feel that much different than what I see in my own kids’ classes now.

I will have to look for some statistics, but I don’t think 2000 was an inflection point in people moving around. If anything, I feel like I know fewer adults moving now because people have more opportunity to work remote than we did in pre-2000 times.

A couple of years ago I was at an event at a local school, and they opened a 25 year capsule. And, out popped 10 Pokemon card packs.

I've thoroughly enjoyed it when someone sends me a "time capsule" - something I've intentionally created for myself, then entrusted to someone else to give back to me.

So far, this has taken exactly one form (albeit several times): a letter I wrote to myself, where someone sends it to me after one year has passed. That's about the edge of "reasonable". Holding on to something for many years, or holding onto something larger than a letter (or at a scale of more than maybe 30 of them - which might explain why teachers seem to do this), makes it more of a burden on the sender.

I differentiate this from a couple of other models I can think of:

1. Burying a time capsule indefinitely (I may forget about it past when I should open it).

2. Receiving something from my childhood (it wasn't my intent to send it to my future self).

3. Paying for a service which does this, like a safe deposit box (I have a constant reminder that it's there).