Here is one of a series of President tokens I found that may spark some memories. I have the complete series and I can tell you they were not released by the US mint. Can anyone tell me who put together this series of "Tokens" (I do have the answer to this riddle).
I have the aluminum medals from Shell or Texaco. Here are photos of another set I previously posted at CT. The spine of the red book says "A Coin History of our Presidents" and "USA Liberty Edition"
You got it...These were from Shell Oil Co. and are not aluminum though. I don't know what metal it is (brass or plated steel) but it's far too heavy for aluminum. These were given to customers after a fill up and customers were given the collectors card to display their Tokens/Medals in.
The aluminum set was given out at the stations. there were a certain number of the aluminum coins that said you were a winner. You sent in the winning token and they sent you the set of brass tokens. Richard
When was that? My memory of gas stations goes back to 1968, but I don't remember any promotions like that.
I don't know exactly when that was as it was explained that way to me by my father. He passed away in 2003. Sunoco ran the same type program with the "Landmarks of America Coin Game" in which the tokens were made by the Franklin Mint. Photos to follow. Richard
This series ended Feb. 14 1970. I believe that most, if not all, of these gas station promotionals at that time were run by The Franklin Mint. Richard
My hometown had Sinclair, Esso, Texaco, Philipps 66, DX (which I think was part of the Sunoco Group), Skelly, Shell, Mobil and Gulf gas stations (that I remember), as well as a couple of independent stations in the late '60s, but the only promotions I remember from them were some baseball and Disney promotions. Anyway, thanks for showing your "Landmarks of America Coin Game" tokens.
There have been many different promotions from the various gas stations back then. There were a couple of different US President series, a fifty states series, the landmarks series, two different antique car series, probably some others that I can't remember (There may hav been a dinosaur series, that would have been a natural for Sinclar.). They also did the same type of thing in Europe with different things being commemorated The Franklin mint may have stuck the tokens, but they did not run the promotions. The oil companies have been running promotions and giveaways for the purchase of gasoline since the early 20th century. Back in the 30's I know they gave away glassware and table settings. My grandmother put together a complete eight place table setting of horseshoe pattern glassware including platters, butter dish, pitcher etc, from the gas station giveaways. (Over the years parts were broken, lost, or disappeared but we have now reconstructed the whole set except for the covered butter dish.)