Then in April of 1962 I was enthralled by this ad which ran on the last page of all the DC comics published that month:
The Baseball Coins were inserted in Salada Tea and Junket Dessert boxes. Here are a couple examples of the Junket boxes:
(Not mine.)
(Not mine.)
A 180 coin set was prepared initially. Unfortunately they didn't plan for expansion and no New York Mets or Houston Colt .45s were included in the initial 180 coin set. Coins for 41 players (not all of whom were Mets or Colt .45s) were therefore quickly added to the set while 21 coins were dropped resulting in a revised 200 coin set skip numbered to #221. Meanwhile the plastic shells were redesigned even more quickly to reflect the pending change and the 21 dropped coins can be found in either shell:
Initial Back
(Not mine.)
Revised Back
(Not mine.)
The shells were colour coded by team:
Red: Athletics, Cubs, Senators
Orange: Braves, Mets, Orioles, Pirates
Blue/Teal: Angels, Dodgers, Yankees
Dark Blue: Colts, Phillies, Red Sox, Tigers
Black: Cardinals, Giants, White Sox
White: Indians, Redlegs, Twins
(Not mine.)
The coins were a runaway success which necessitated multiple production runs throughout the year. As a result, there are multiple variants with players changing teams, positions, poses, the colour of the buttons of their uniforms plus of course spelling corrections. Counting only "major" variants raises the set total to 266. But there are also a multitude of not well catalogued minor variants involving the positioning of type. Here's a scan of some minor variants that I received from a trading buddy:
(Not mine.)
Worse yet there's quite a bit of variance in the colours of the shells with the blue of the Angels, Dodgers and Yankees devolving to a sort of teal.
Both 180 coin and 200 coin Presentation Sets were also distributed to certain retailers to induce them to promote Salada and Junket products to customers:
(Not mine.)
(Not mine.)
In Canada the Baseball Coins were free inside Shirriff Potato Chips:
(Not mine.)
The 200 coin set skip numbered to #221 was the one released in Canada and it's nice and clean without any of the variants that have driven many U.S. collectors to distraction:
I've had a Canadian Shirriff set for over 35 years and I'm now tentatively starting on the Salada-Junket ones as well. I've identified about 223 properly "different" coins. The coins from a Presentation Set might be a good way to get going on a Salada-Junket set as well.