Introduction
Want to play a shell game?

No, No it's not what you think! I am not talking about putting a coin under one of three shells or cups and shuffling them around while you try to keep track of the coin. What I refer to here are the promotional "coin" games offered in the late 1960s and early 1970s by the Shell Oil Company at their local service stations.

What possess us here at the Coin-n-Medal Asylum to collect the eclectic array of stuff we do is always a valid question. The answer goes back to what makes us so passionate about collecting. We collect for reasons of nostalgia, a deep love of history, the beauty of the coin or medal and yes for the investment potential. These little medals fall heavily in the nostalgia category for me. As a kid both my parents worked so after school I would end up at work with one or the other. From the time I was eight I gravitated to by dad's work place which was an auto repair shop. He work the parts counter and I would help by stocking the shelves and sweeping the floors. It wasn't long before they started using me for some of the mechanic "jobs" such as pumping the brakes while the mechanic bleed them and my favorite in the days before wheel balancing machines driving the vehicle while suspended on the lift so the mechanic could balance the rear wheels. I learned a lot in those early years and have fond memories of all the oil and gas memorabilia we destroyed with our BB guns. While the garage where my dad worked sold Phillips 66 gas these Shell medals do invoke a nostalgic feeling in me. Really what could be better than combining my passions for all stuff automotive with coins and medals! Then throw in one of the games was space exploration related and I was hooked!

Prior to the introduction of Shell's "Mr. President" coin game in 1968 there had been examples of numismatic related games used in promoting one brand of gasoline over the other; however, these had basically amounted to matching two halves of pieces of play money to win prizes. The game pieces were not intended as collectables themselves and few if any were saved. The "Mr. President" game was the first to marry true coin collecting to this method of advertising. The coins themselves were a small prize worthy of saving and assembling the set was a challenge many could not resist. This promotion was the first time that coins (actually medals but we will use the term the marketers used back in the day) were used as game pieces and one of the prizes was a set of President Medals struck in bronze. One must keep in mind in the sixties there were as many or more collectors who collected medals and silver bars produced by a countless number of private mints as there were collectors of historical coins. The Franklin Mint was probably the Pied Piper of this phenomenon so it is only fitting that they are involved in this story.

The prizes in the Shell coin games were nothing to scoff at. They were from low to high: $1, $5, the afore mentioned bronze set, $50, $100, $500, $1,000 and $5,000! For their first foray into coin games Shell turned to the Franklin Mint for the production of both the aluminum game pieces and the premium bronze sets to be used as one of the prizes. The aluminum game pieces were actually struck in a special alloy developed by the Franklin Mint which was one of the security features that the Franklin Mint brought to the project. Certain issues of the aluminum pieces were struck with special "Instant Winner" reverses so these and the coins that would be the keys to each prize level had to be tightly controlled. Again the Franklin Mint's reputation for security came in to play here.

The large number of game pieces required for such a wide-spread promotion created capacity issues for the Franklin Mint. In order to meet the production schedule the Franklin Mint expanded their Folcroft plant adding 24 new small Schuler coining presses capable of striking 300 coins per minute. This brought the Franklin Mint's capacity up to 4 million game pieces a day!

Unfortunately, one of the other process used in the production and packaging of these game pieces was detrimental to the surfaces of the individual coins. To insure a good mix of game pieces the output of the 24 coin presses each presumably striking a different President's medal were fed into a large steel drum which tumbled the medals much like a cement truck! Now well mixed the medals were placed in a centrifugal feeder that lined them up on a conveyor. The conveyor then took them to a wrapping machine that placed them in individual paper packets that hid their identity - no peeking by the service station attendant.

One of the more popular prizes was the bronze set. These were produced in such quantity that the Franklin Mint automated the packaging of these as well. The medals would be placed in specific tubes (think real long coin rolls) then complete sets would be dispensed into waiting bags. These bags would then be placed in a special envelope along with a custom display board and booklet that told the story of each coin. Couldn't find that elusive game piece to win your bronze set -- no problem they were available for purchase. In fact, a full-page color ad appeared in the February 1969 issue of Coinage offering these at a discount along with 1,000 count lots of the aluminum game pieces.

For what seems such a simple game the logistics and planning needed to be quite thorough and complex. Despite the enormous effort the "Mr. President" game must have been a success because Shell Oil would continue the formula for future games. In 1969 they would release the "Famous Facts & Faces," "Man in Space" and "States of the Union" coin game promotions.

Despite any commercial success this generated for Shell, Coinage Magazine spoke glowingly about the program stating "One of the most significant results of the 'Mr. President Game' is that several hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of new collectors are in the making. The numismatic 'bug' is biting new hobbyists across the country." The problem (in my opinion) was that by breaking the aluminum game coins into prize groups making certain coins keys to these groups created a situation where it was impossible to collect a complete set. To a true collector this can be detrimental. We all enjoy a challenge but the aluminum "set" is an impossibility! Winning or buying a bronze set is much less satisfying than putting one together and besides they're a different metallic composition with slightly different designs and you know how us die-hard collectors are about varieties!

The Shell "Famous Facts & Faces" coin game was also produced in 1969 by the Franklin Mint. However, the 1969 "Man in Space" coin game medals were produced by the newest subsidiary of the Glendinning Company - The Danbury Mint of Westport, Connecticut. While the aluminum and bronze medals themselves do not have any distinguishing mintmark on them much of the packaging was marked (copyrighted) by the Glendinning Company. The "States of the Union" coin game medals also lack any mintmarks and are not listed in the Krause Guidebook of Franklin Mint Issues (1973 or 1981 editions). All the packaging material in this collection is copyrighted "Shell Oil Company" which does not help pinpoint who the producing Mint might be. Further research on this series is needed.

They say imitation is the most sincere form of flattery and this coin game promotion had its imitators. In 1969 the Sun Oil Company marketed as Sunoco produced in association with the Franklin Mint two series of their "Antique Car Coin Game" as well as a "Landmarks of America" coin game. Not to be left out in 1970 Esso (now known as Exxon) sponsored an "English Football Series" for their United Kingdom customers. Also overseas British Petroleum (BP) sponsored a "Belgian Sportsman Series" with limited-edition sterling silver and gold-plated sterling silver presentation pieces in addition to aluminum examples distributed to their customers. Back in the States, in 1971 the Husky Oil Company in the western United States had a 13 medal "Rugged Americans Series" produced for promotional purposes. The promotional coin idea was not limited to just the oil and gas industry. In 1970 and 1971 Somerset Importers, US, distributers of Johnnie Walker Scotch issued the "Johnnie Walker Football Series" featuring NFL teams plus six Big-10 teams in 1970. The Coca-Cola Company joined the game in 1972 with their "Great Olympic Moments" series. All of these were struck by the Franklin Mint.

It is likely many others series and games were produced by other private mints. While interesting in themselves they are beyond the scope of this eExhibit.

References

--------- ; New Shell Game: In Gas Stations Across the Country, Millions of People are Learning the Fun of Coin Collecting; COINage, Behn-Miller Publications Inc., Sparta, Illinios; Volume 4 Number 11, 1968, November, page 40; illus.

Advertisement; Franklin Mint Bronze Presidential Sets (Jonathon); COINage, Behn-Miller Publications Inc., Sparta, Illinios; Volume 5 Number 3, 1969, March, page 4; illus. (color)

Culver, Virginia and Krause, Chester L., Guidebook of Franklin Mint Issues; Krause Publications, Iola, Wisconsin, 1974 Edition, 1974

Krause, Chester L., Guidebook of Franklin Mint Issues; Krause Publications, Iola, Wisconsin, 1981 Edition, 1981

--------- ; Numismatic Issues of the Franklin Mint -- 1970 Edition -- Covering the Years 1965-1969; The Franklin Mint, Franklin Center, Pennsylvania, 1970