Remember Shell Oil's 1960's presidential coin game promotion? If so, does anyone remember what you would have won with a coin that said "Instant Winner"? I assume that different presidents represented different prize levels ???? Found a couple in a box of nuts and bolts. I know they have no value now, but what could you have won in the contest?
I had a bunch of these and some from another promotion for Famous Americans. I sold them all off couple years back. Here's a couple images of some I had. Never knew what the promo was for other than collecting them:
Here's a pic of the original collection card. There were two different sets of coins, aluminum and bronze. The bronze set was an instant win prize.
shell coins anyone....... I have hundreds of these coins maybe as many as 10 sets are they worth keeping, or should i take them in to recycle with all my cans.....?
eBay completed listings show that the aluminum ones sell for an average of .25 each. Sell 'em by the set on eBay, in my opinion. Welcome to CT!!!
Surely you don't mean you have 30 different aluminum tokens. So far as I know most of the aluminum are very scarce to rare and some don't even exist. These were made in three different runs and the common tokens are all common in each different variety though a few are tough in the last variety. "Instant winners" recieved a complete bronze set and these are quite common. The aluminuminstant winner tokens are elusive but can be found with diligence.
I actually have a States of The Union version of the Shell's Coin Game series. North Carolina to be exact. I can say that I am 99.5% certain it is Aluminum. Is the state set also from the 60s? I'm a little curious about the history and potential value but have had little luck with the history or exact pricing google searching it. (I just found this one on the ground a while back in my apartment parking lot. I kept it because I'm a bit of a coin/token pack rat.)
Maybe for the low value instant winners, but I doubt too many people decided not to redeem the $1,000 instant winners and I don't think they would have made a bunch of extras of that one and just not sent them out.
I wasn't aware there were any instant winners other than one single president. Each group of presidents which could be redeemed for a prize included at least one very difficult to find one with a tiny mintage. I've never seen one of these nor heard of anyone who has other than a small winner back in 1968. Many of the groups also had a difficult to find president and these are still available because they weren't much good without the "stopper". It always seemed to me that many people at the time didn't know the difference between a stopper and a common token so there might be some of these stoppers floating around. Since there are so few collectors it always seemed possible that I might locate it. But the fact seems to be that people who paid no attention to them also did nothing to set them aside or have thrown them away at some point since. You can put together interesting sets of these with the varieties. Finding nice examples can be much more difficult than it seems they should be. But I seriously doubt that there will ever be anything close to a complete set. I'm guessing the company diligently destroyed all the stoppers that were redeemed and even the instant winners. It's not impossible that completed sets and series are locked up in a safe or executive desk but the odds just keep dropping every year. These are not the sort of thing that one would expect to surface after so long. The Franklin mint probably made a set number of each stopper and then the dies were destroyed. These tokens would have been carefully monitored at least until they were shipped to the individual filling stations (if not beyond). I do agree that anybody who was working on these sets would have known which were the stoppers and would have quickly redeemed them. These things were everywhere in '68 and '69 because lots of people didn't wait to throw them out. Most people who used Shell gas had a token or two in the car at least until they cleaned it next. If one were to try to accumulate them at the time he could easily have gotten many hundreds of them in short order.
No. This isn't it. You can almost tell by the fact that it isn't Unc. Many of the Shell versions are spotted or otherwise unattractive but they are almost all Unc or high end AU. The Franklin Mint tokens have a little more modern design and most have the lettering partially obscured by the bust. There are at least four series of these medals issued without attribution from the 20th century. I believe your's is circa 1933. If so these came with a couple extra medals for the capitol and was also issued in both bronze and aluminum.
Awesome thread! I have been working for Shell (Chemicals Division) for the past 8 years and I didn't even know that such tokens existed. I guess it was way before my time LOL
I recall riding my bicycle to the local gas station during the time these were being issued. Still have a few. I seem to remember their were some prizes and I think one of them was a six pack of Yoo Hoo chocolate drink. Another may have been a baseball style cap, but regardless there were prizes for completeing the set.
After the "Mr President" series there were several other series by both Shell and Sunoco. The "States of the Union" game was around 1971. Shell's "Famous Facts and Faces" was one of the more artistic and interesting ones but these tend to be harder to find. There also appears to have been a version in Great Britain.