I'm Balticfox and here's more of my story!

[Balticfox]

Here I'm continuing my story which I started in my Introduction thread:

https://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=353515

Shirriff is a brand name that's still magical to me to this very day. It was back in the fall of 1960 that Shirriff launched one of the most successful product promotions in Canadian history with the inclusion of plastic Hockey Coins in its Jelly Desserts, Puddings and Pie Fillings. Here's the ad that ran in Saturday newspaper comic sections and a picture of a box that included a Coin:



(Not mine.)

The Coins themselves were an absolute delight:



(Not mine.)



Each NHL team had a different coloured shell:



Toronto Maple Leafs - dark blue
Montréal Canadiens - red
Detroit Red Wings - white
Chicago Black Hawks - black
New York Rangers - light blue
Boston Bruins - yellow

Little boys across the breadth of Canada were enthralled and pestered their moms for Shirriff desserts. Moms had no problem acceding to these pleas because the desserts were cheap and the kids gobbled them up without complaint.

The promotion was repeated for the 1961-62 Hockey season although the coins no longer came with a clear plastic covering the fronts:



The second year of the promotion was even more successful than the first given that the 1961-62 Shirriff Hockey Coins are several times more plentiful today than the 1960-61 Shirriff Hockey Coins. Moreover the promotion clearly required at least one additional production run for the Shirriff Coins because the colouring of many of the shells is "off", e.g. some Red Wings are a yellowy white, some Rangers are a grey-blue, some Maple Leafs are so dark a navy blue that it borders on black and some Canadiens are a maroon. I've deselected from the off colours when collecting these coins so I don't possess all the examples. Here though are two with the off colour ones in the second row:



Salada Foods which owned Shirriff at the time took note of the success of the promotion in the previous year and extended the promotion to their Tea and to Shirriff Potato Chips:

(Not mine.)

I remember that it was the Salada branded coins that were included in the Shirriff Potato Chips:

(Not mine.)

Strange but perhaps the Shirriff branded shells were needed for the desserts and they had lots of the Salada branded ones. Salada also made Shields for each team available by mail order:





These Shirriff/Salada Hockey Coin promotions were such a success that they prompted many more coin promotions in Canada from CFL to Cars, Airplanes, Fish, Warships, Dogs, Flags, Space and Monkees over the next seven years or so.

I had such fond memories of the Hockey Coins that they were a very high priority for me when in 1979 I started re-assembling the treasures of my younger days. I therefore completed the two sets plus the Shields within a few years. But a couple of years ago I broke my 1961-62 set into a Salada back collection and a Shirriff back collection and I'm now pecking away at each separately!

[Balticfox]

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.

[Eric72]

Well written (and illustrated) overview of this product line. Thank you for posting it. This is exactly the type of content that I enjoy reading and seeing on Net54.

Bravo for a job well done. The next time I see one of these coins at a card show, I'll pick one up.

[sb1]

Agreed!

While I don't collect all of things that Baltic Fox does, I do collect a myriad of collectibles from many genres, I really appreciate the broad scope of his collection and the completeness of all related items.

His enthusiasm is something that should be encouraged on this site and not chastised.

[Balticfox]

Salada then crossed things up in the late summer of 1962 by issuing a set of 154 Football Coins featuring eleven NFL teams (the St. Louis Cardinals, Dallas Cowboys and Minnesota Viking weren't included) plus the Boston Patriots, New York Titans and Buffalo Bills of the AFL. But they were metal!





I wasn't aware of them at the time since they weren't made available in Canada. I have 99 of the Coins in my present day collection but they're not a high priority so I don't pursue them aggressively.

Shirriff then issued a set of sixty metal Hockey Coins in Canada in the fall of 1962:





The set included only Montréal Canadiens, Toronto Maple Leafs, All-Stars (in white with yellow trim jerseys) and Trophy Winners. As a result, only Bobby Hull appeared in a Blackhawk jersey, only Doug Harvey in a Ranger jersey, and no players whatsoever in Red Wing or Bruin jerseys. What a rip-off! Both my best collecting buddy and I were incensed at this dramatic cheapening of the concept.

As a result, I refused to even consider the 1962-63 Hockey Coins for twenty years after I started collecting again as an adult. But since I'd completed my other Hockey Coin sets, I broke down one day in 1998(?) when I saw a near perfect set cheap in a dingy card shop just north of the downtown area of Hamilton. I bought the thing and stored it with my other treasures. In fact I've upgraded about a half dozen of the less than absolutely perfect Coins in the last 25 years leaving only coins #47 and #51 that "need" to be upgraded for tiny spots of rim wear.

Salada then issued a set of 63 Baseball Coins in the spring of 1963:





I can't say whether the 1963 Salada Baseball Coins were issued in Canada or not because I simply don't remember. These days I need only better specimens of #10 and #30 to complete my set.

The metal Coins clearly weren't as popular as the plastic Coins had been because these were the last Coins Salada/Shirriff issued for over five years.