Jump to content
CoinPeople.com

Pinnacle Mint coins


Recommended Posts

Hey everyone

 

I was digging thru my closet when I came upon a long lost set of coins from my childhood that are not worth that much and are not of much interest to most ppl on this forum... a set of 1998 Pinnacle Mint coin/cards. For anyone not familiar, the good people at Pinnacle tried (and failed) to create a product back in the late 90s that would appeal to both card collectors and coin collectors and ended up creating something no one wanted (except me apparently). Me being a stupid kid tho thought this was the greatest idea ever conceived. My mother worked for the big evil tobacco companies back in the day refilling cigarette stands and replacing ads, etc. at different convenience stores and in return for helping her I would ask for a pack of those baseball coin cards (instead of money like a normal human being). At the time I was more into cards than into coins.

 

Anyway, I had for the longest time kept a solid silver coin separate but it wasn't until very recently when I was reading about Pinnacle Mint coins that I realized they had special subsets of these coins known as artist proofs and I recognized it immediately. I had a gold plated artist proof of Mo Vaughn (of which only 100 were made) and this was numbered 1 out of 100. Not sure if these were numbered in the order they were made (i.e. the 91st coin of 100 would be 91 of 100) but still a rare issue. Turns out the only coins with any kind of interest (besides of course the gold and silver) are these gold plate artist proofs but they're still not worth a lot lol. I essentially had my mom spend close to $50 or more on what was essentially one ounce of silver, a gold plate coin worth probably $5 on a good day, and a heap of worthless pieces of brass and cardboard lol. Great memories tho lol.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I understand, as I have completed sets of non sport cards. Not worth much if you try to sell them to dealers, 30 years ago when I decided that I would get out of doing the shows with the non sport cards. I sold 7 milk crates filled with the non sport cards sets, packs extra's. Brought in a total off $120.00 USD. I recently asked the dealer a friend that bought them what he would think they are worth today. He said about the same or a little less, since there is so little interest in them and even baseball and other soprt cards are down.

My father be fore he passed use to have me buy the sets of Detroit sport team coins, when 7-11 or the big box drug stores sold them. 3 sets he had me buy, one set of each grand kid and his. I'm glad he enjoyed them while he was here since like most of those things are zero to below worthless on the secondary market. Like the art bars or collectors plates, worth spot and a little above to what somebody wants to pay.

Being someone that wouldn't know a member of any sports team, if I ran over them in a parking lot till I seen their name on the news. I didn't think the non baseball ones would have any value.

Enjoy them and post some photo's for the rest of use that never seen them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

These sound quite interesting. Some photos would help the rest of us to enjoy your "unique" collection area. Have lots of fun with them. Seems to me the memories have significant value.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My solid silver Scott Rolen coin is back home in Jacksonville (I live in Tallahassee). Its funny because I think I lucked out in a way since the odds of getting a silver coin was one in every 960 packs and the odds of getting a gold plate artist proof was about one in 248. There were 30 coins and 30 parallel cards in this set and the cards were actually custom fitted to hold the coins (which is why this coin is such good condition... I literally left it in the card it came with and doubt I ever handled it until a couple days ago). The 24 k gold coins in this set are actually exceedingly rare since there was only 1 for each player (i.e. 30 overall) and you had to send in for them and Pinnacle actually went out of business the same year these coins came out and so you only had a window of probably 5 or 6 months to redeem them.

 

As for cards I was really into the sports cards, primarily baseball, basketball, and football. There was a time when these were considered can't miss investments and I can remember reading articles about those cheaply made cards from the late 80s and early 90s where they were saying "yeah the prices might be a little low now but the market will eventually absorb them". I.e. the mentality was lets just keep running those printing presses and pumping out more mass-produced stuff. The market got really saturated too, with multiple companies all pumping out cardboard in direct competition with each other. I was a big basketball fan and actually had a decent eye for a 2nd grader (had a complete set of Dream Team basketball cards and the like)... my problem was my card storage system consisted of tightly wrapped rubber bands and my back pocket so even if they had some minimal value they're shot codnition wise lol. As for in-store promos, I recalled a basketball card promo by McDonald's back in the early 90s where you got 2 cards w/ each purchase or something like that but those cards were not worth that much then or now.

 

I did collect a few non-sports cards, primarily cards with comic book characters but the same problems plaguing the sports cards markets were also plaguing the non-sports stuff... cheaply made mass produced products. The older cards are worth more only because nobody kept them but these newer cards were and are not worth hardly anything because as "collector" items ppl felt inclined to hang onto them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting collection. You can marry a love of sports and coins all in one collection. I have some nice miniature silver bars from the Franklin Mint that have old cars on them. I really enjoy them because I like the silver bars and I love old cars.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

oh God pogs are definitely one of those items that at one point were considerec "collectibe" but fell by the wayside because the problem is the marketing of an item as a "collectible" usually results in a larger number of people buying and holding onto items and in effect defeating the rarity factor... I was watching a video the other day about a guy who got so obsessed with beanie babies that he ended up dropping over $100,000 on a bunch of items that he literally cannot sell now

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was watching a video the other day about a guy who got so obsessed with beanie babies that he ended up dropping over $100,000 on a bunch of items that he literally cannot sell now.

 

I know someone like that too, She figured maybe 20 years down the road there'd be a nostalgia kick for them and she could make some bucks.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...