Upraising the Future
World-renowned appraiser Gerald Kwock transforms a lifetime of collecting into unending opportunities for local students.
Gerald Kwock sees value where others don’t. Over eight decades, Kwock has been a collector of everything from milk bottles to ice picks, spending his life recognizing the extraordinary among the mundane. Now, at 86, the retired appraiser and Roosevelt High School (RHS) alumnus is embarking on a final project that fulfills both his genius for collecting and his calling to help others.
Kwock plans to liquidate his vast collection, estimated to be worth millions, and donate it to the Gerald W. G. Kwock Charitable Foundation Scholarship Fund at the Hawaiʻi Community Foundation (HCF), thereby endowing his namesake scholarship that supports underprivileged Hawaiʻi students. His renewable scholarship provides up to $12,000 for students attending the University of Hawaiʻi (UH) for eight semesters, contingent on maintaining a 2.8 GPA or higher.
“This scholarship isn’t just about access,” said Eric Laʻa, a philanthropy advisor and longtime scholarship officer at HCF. “It’s about completion. Gerald was early to recognize the importance of renewable scholarships because he saw the need to ensure students don’t just start college—they finish it.”
Hawaiʻi’s King of Collectibles, Mr. Rough Rider
Kwock’s fascination with collecting began as a child in Kaimukī. At age six, he brought home milk bottles, now worth $50 apiece to savvy collectors. Later, his worldwide travels in the 1950s led to a trove of stamps from Hong Kong’s Treaty Ports that he recalls buying for $60 and selling at a Christie’s auction in 1990 for $248,000. That windfall launched his charitable foundation, on which he partnered with HCF in 2015 to handle administration.
Kwock recounts an astonishing array of items he’s collected over the years, including antique license plates, matchbooks, medals, can openers, postcards, milk caps and covers, phonograph records, historical documents, and many coins and tokens, like a 1930 lunch token from Ala Moana School (which doesn’t exist anymore). “I found it in a junk bowl in Knoxville, Tennessee, for 25 cents,” Kwock recalled. “That token is now worth about $30,000.”
Though Kwock’s collecting is eclectic, his loyalty to his alma mater, Roosevelt High School, is singular. From putting the “S” in PTSA to ensure student representation to organizing fundraisers and campus restoration projects, Kwock has been a fixture of RHS life, estimating that he annually volunteered 2,500 hours, incredibly more than a full-time job every week, for more than two decades.
“Gerald is Mr. Rough Rider,” said former RHS Spanish teacher Cynthia Teramoto. “He has had a profound, positive impact on the students, families, and faculty of Roosevelt High School and the local community. His loyalty to the Roosevelt ‘ohana is unmatched.”
Trash to Treasure, People to Potential
Kwock’s scholarship fund supports UH students pursuing fields including journalism, English, and communications—areas he felt were traditionally overlooked by scholarships. “What I want them to remember is simple,” Kwock said. “Get a good education. I want underprivileged students to have the opportunity to succeed.”
Kwock also donates extensively, including 500 territorial bottles to the Hawaiʻi State Archives and 22,000 yearbooks to the Hawaiʻi State Library.
“Gerald invests in the overlooked, whether it’s a forgotten yearbook or an underprivileged student,” notes Laʻa. “He recognizes their potential and lifts them up.”
Endowed by his collection’s proceeds, Kwock’s scholarship will support students in perpetuity, ensuring his vision of empowering Hawaiʻi’s youth lives on.
“I have no children or family to leave this to,” Kwock said. “But I know the scholarship will go on forever, helping students who need it. That’s enough for me.”
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