Thursday, November 8, 2012

On Golden Bond

You fearless webmaster managed to snag, amidst all the hoopla of the past two weeks, the partial remains of a 1956 O-Pee-Chee Golden Coin package of eBay the other day. Golden Coin has been blogged on here before but remains a slippery issue as there are questions as to the exact contents of the 1948-49 issue compared to 1956's, the correlation with various Meet The Presidents games, the oddity of a Canadian issue for a set of US Presidents, the lack of an identifiable 1952 issue and even the composition of the 1956 coins (as in chemical composition-metallic or plastic?) but my purchase answered none of these!  Rather I wanted to investigate the inner sleeve that held the coin and gum.

Redesigned from 1949, the inner sleeve is made of a thick cardboard with yellow and blue highlights:

 






Measuring exactly two inches by four, the sleeve advertises 33 coins, even though Grover Cleveland's kangaroo straight made it 34 in actuality.  The back shows the checklist and a glued down flap:















I even took a side view-it measures about 3/8" even though its distorted here:








The coins were numbered in 1956 but I can't find a Cleveland to see if he has 22 and 24. Here is our fifth President, James Monroe, to illustrate:






















The number is clear, as is the shield--the 49's had a text back, as do all game pieces from Meet The Presidents no matter which year the latter were marketed:






















The coins look metallic but are made of a hard plastic, unlike the brass ones from 1949.  Mine is warped a little and there is a seam on the rim.  If I get another I'll dissect it to see what's what. These are larger than the 49's, which were an inch in diameter.  These are 1 1/8".  The coins may have been in a cello wrapper as well; I am unsure about that at present.

Here is the wrapper that held the above:






As mentioned, it appears to be a Canadian issue:





The flipside held a It Happened To A President Comic, which have been looked at previously. These are red, the earlier version is not and is more of a brown/rust color. That though is fodder for another day.






































ACC numbers are:

1948-49 Golden Coin PX14
1956 Golden Coin PX15
1948-49 It Happened To A President R711-5
1956 It Happened To A President (none)

I am very much interested in information on Golden Coin.  If you have something new or different, drop me a line.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

I have the Grover Cleveland coin and it has the numbers 22 and 24 on the same coin. I have 28 of the coins. Any idea of the value?

Anonymous said...

I found the identical James Monroe coin you mention above (front and back) while metal detecting, so mine's definitely metallic. Does that mean it's not 1956 but something earlier?

toppcat said...

It could be earlier but I've never gotten clarity on this.

Ralph Silberman said...

So, I have a set of coins (missing George Washington, and missing any identifying packaging, but found your blog with an image search), but going up to Number 35--Kennedy--showing only a beginning date of 1961, so obviously issued before 1963. Were these also Topps, or did someone else take this over?