A Smorgasbord! 7-Eleven Super Star Sports Coins

From the 1970s through the 1990s, it seemed like you could find your favorite baseball stars on food product packaging everywhere you looked: supermarkets, corner stores, restaurants, and beyond. This past year, in an effort to capture a little more nostalgia, I set a goal to expand my own collection of these "food-issue" cards. In this series I'll show the specific examples I've acquired, and share a little bit of history about the food or beverage sponsor as well. 

Previous entries can be found here. 

 

  

Summer, 1984. The MLB All-Star Game is coming up next week. You've been playing baseball with all your buddies just about every glorious, free morning since school let out. And on any day of the week, you can ride your bike down to the 7-Eleven, stroll right in, and use some of your lawn-mowing money to get yourself a nice, cool Slurpee.  

 

 

Life is good. 

 

So in you go, straight for the Slurpee machine. You know the flavors: Coca-Cola, Cherry, Grape, Fanta. 

 

Today feels like a cherry day. And it's going to be extra good, because you know you'll be getting a bonus. A special baseball collector's coin will be adhered to the bottom of each Slurpee cup!

 

 

 

At some 7-Eleven locations, they just give you the first Slurpee cup on the stack, so whichever player coin you get is the one you're stuck with. But at this location, you have an "in". The employee who's usually behind the counter in the afternoon is a big baseball fan, and if you're a good kid, he'll let you rummage through the cups to find a coin you really want.

 

Thankfully, he's behind the counter today, and the store is pretty empty, so you get carte blanche. After about a dozen cups, you find your guy. 

 

It's the Wizard of Oz! 

 

You hand the cup over to the 7-Eleven guy, and he promptly fills it up with icy, slushy, cherry goodness and hands it back. You walk outside into the warm summer air, take a few sips, peel the coin off the bottom of the cup. and flip it over. 

  

 

"4 Consecutive Gold Glove Awards"

  

That's the ticket. You just love the way he plays shortstop—his speed, his nimbleness, his acrobatics. And he just seems like a fun baseball player. You've already found his base card and all-star card in the Topps set this summer, and you can't wait to add this coin to your collection.

 

You hop back on your bike, and on the short ride home you hatch an idea.

 

Last week, mom brought a box of Post cereal home from the supermarket, and it had a pretty cool license plate prize inside. You've been meaning to attach it to the back of your bike. When you get home, you open the top drawer of your dresser (otherwise known as your collection drawer) and take it out.

 

 

  

Oh yeah. This summer is going to be rad.

 

Now let's give credit where credit is due.

 

 

 

 

7-Eleven began in 1927 as the Southland Ice Company. Eventually Southland became a chain, and the company added more goods and services to each location. These "convenience stores" were a hit, and by 1946, the name was changed to 7-Eleven. This helped indicate to customers that the store hours were 7 a.m. to 11 p.m.

 

Franchising began in 1961, and soon after the company would introduce the world to names like "Slurpee" and "Big Gulp".

 

By the 1980s, some 7-Eleven locations had arcades. And some even rented videos! Do and of you 1980s kids remember that?

 

As for these days, 7-Eleven is a global brand with about 85,000 locations in 20 different countries, including Thailand, South Korea, Denmark, Norway, and Australia.

 

If only they'd bring back the baseball coins. 

Some of the food-issue cards I've featured in this Smorgasbord series to this point have been fairly obscure, but I know a bunch of you must have some of these 7-Eleven coins in your collections.

 

So here are a few questions:

 

(1) Which coins do you have? 

 

(2) Were you big on Slurpees and Slush Puppies back then? If so, what was your favorite flavor? 

 

(3) Did you have any of those Post cereal license plates? Did you hang them under your bike seat?

Share in the comment section, and thanks for reading! 

2024 Series Custom Card Giveaway: Duck Race Winners

A couple of weeks ago I finally posted about the series of custom cards I designed in 2024. Better late than never, because it gave me the opportunity to create another giveaway. (And a duck race.) The first five finishers of the race would win a custom card of their choice from the 2024 series.

I was happy to see that 12 people entered the giveaway within the entry period. That's a good flock of ducks!

Here's a list of the competitors, and a link to their blogs or other trading card–related social media sites if they have any:

 

Jay Wigley (TCDB: jaywigley)

Tom (Batting Out of Order)

jlcre2003 (TCDB: jlcre2003)

RJ Sahl (TCDB: rjsahl)

POISON75 (S.R. '75 Cards)

Rod (Padrographs)

Matt (Cards over Coffee) 

Matt (Diamond Jesters) 

Sean (Baseball Cards In Japan)

Red Cardboard (Red Cardboard)

Mark (The Chronicles of Fuji) 

Derek (TCDB: CollectorTBNL)

 

 

Twelve competitors. Five prizes. That means you have more than a 40% chance of winning one of them!

If you haven't seen the duck race in action, or don't remember it from last time, here's how it works: 

Each entrant is represented by an animated rubber duck that is sitting at the starting line on an animated river. The starting gun fires, and all the ducks begin floating randomly along the river as the screen scrolls horizontally. Eventually the finish line appears, and the first duck to cross the line wins. 

 

Yesterday I ran the script and recorded the action. Want to see how it all turned out? 

 

Play the video, find your duck, and here we go. (You'll see a list of the top 5 finishers at the end of the video.)

Wow! That Batting Out of Order duck really turned on the jets at the end. And full credit to Fuji, who somehow managed to make it into the top 5 after blowing a tire around the 19-second mark.

Anyhow, as shown in the scroll-down list at the very end of the video, here are the top five ducks:

(1) Tom (Batting Out of Order)

(2) Rod (Padrographs)

(3) Red Cardboard

(4) Jay Wigley

(5) Mark (The Chronicles of Fuji)

Congratulations! All five of you will receive a custom card of your choice from the 2024 series. Here's the list again. Click on each card to see what they look like, and to read about them. Then make your selection.

Standard Set 

1956 Jerry Seinfeld

1956 Cosmo Kramer

Beastie Boys In Action

The Jimi Hendrix Experience

The Princess Bride

Mel Gibson Film Stars

Top Gear Future Stars

 

Sitcom Subset

The Golden Girls

Married with Children

Seinfeld 

 

If you're a winner, just let me know which card you'd like in the comment section.

If you've never sent me your mailing address, or if it's changed recently, please do send it to me. You can find my contact information on the blog here, or you can message me through TCDB here.

Thanks again to all of you for participating. Hope you enjoyed the race!

Stunners from the 1930s

So far this year, I've focused on adding more vintage cards to my collection. But I'm not talking about baseball, or any other major sport. It's the other stuff I've been after. And even more specifically that that, it's got to be real eye candy.

 

First I found a few cards from a 1956 set released by Gum Inc. called "Adventure". A couple of months later, I picked up a few more beauties from that same set.

 

Now I want to share a few cards from an even older set. I didn't know anything about it until the following image came up in a random online browsing session. 

 

 

I was floored. 

 

It's just such a cool scene. Three archers in uniform with bows drawn and aimed toward the sky, displaying their technique. On a trading card.

 

I had to do more research.

 

It turns out that the card was issued by a German margarine company called Sanella. One card was included inside each margarine wrapper, and there were 112 cards in the set. They measure 2 3/4 inches by 4 1/8 inches.

 

Here's another example: 

 

 

 

Total stunner.

 

And that's the thing about great artwork. It captivates you by freezing a moment in time. Think about it. If this card were an 8-foot by 4-foot painting in a museum and you saw it from across the room, it would stop you in your tracks and almost force you to take some time to look at it and appreciate it.

 

Here's another fantastic example: 

 

 

 

Great vantage point, right?

 

Now here's what you'll find on a card back:

 

 

 

Here's the first three lines of text, translated by online software: 

 

German fencing champion Helene Mayer (front right) against Hungarian champion Miss Bogen

As for the text after that, you're in for a pretty cool surprise. Check this out:  

 

The space for pasting in this picture is left blank under the keyword "Fencing" in the Handbook of Sports section.

Yeah, that's right. Back in 1932, you could have obtained a handbook of sports from Sanella, and slotted each collector's card into its very own section!

 

I found some images of it online. Here's the front cover:

 

 

 

And here are a couple of interior pages:

 

 

 

 

Now more translation from the card back:

  

This handbook, which contains space for 112 different colorful collectible pictures, provides alphabetical information on the entire field of sports on 120 pages and is also equipped with more than one hundred monochrome illustrations. It will be delivered postage-free upon receipt of a 70 Pfennig stamp addressed to "Sanella," P.O. Box No. 125, Berlin C2. Please clearly indicate your address.

These sports pictures are available when purchasing Sanella margarine, one picture for every half pound. A special exchange center will allow the exchange of any missing pictures starting in February 1933.

 

If you collected baseball stickers in your younger days and had the accompanying album to stick them in, those paragraphs will sound quite familiar.  

 

But back to the cards now. Here's the fourth one I purchased:

 

 

 

What a great study in light and dark, big and small. That climber is just a tiny speck of life, dangling in the shadows, compared with the enormous range of mountains surrounding him. I think the only sound he'd be hearing right there is the wind, and an occasional creaking of the rope that he's rappelling down. How much farther does he have to go? We've got no idea. But he's probably never breathed such fresh oxygen or felt more alive and aware.

 

And that's what I've been adding to my collection lately. These particular cards ran me between $5 and $12 each, which is quite affordable considering their age and foreign origin.

I think the next step is creating a binder for my growing vintage multi-sport and non-sport collection. Some of them, like these Sanella cards, are cut at an unconventional size, so I've got to find pages that will accommodate them. Might take some research, but it'll be worth the time spent. Cards like these need to be in a binder, not tucked away in a box somewhere.

How about you readers and collectors? Are you fans of the more obscure vintage cards like these? 

 

Let me know in the comment section, and thanks for reading! 

2025 Series Custom Cards: PRINTED (Plus a Giveaway)

Did you think all of the "2025 year in review" content out there on the internet was finally over?

 

Well, think again!

 

You're looking at a collage of the custom cards that I shared on the blog in 2025 (or thereabouts). Here's the list:

 

Standard Set 

1956 Jerry Seinfeld

1956 Cosmo Kramer

Beastie Boys In Action

The Jimi Hendrix Experience

The Princess Bride

Mel Gibson Film Stars

Top Gear Future Stars

 

Sitcom Subset

The Golden Girls

Married with Children

Seinfeld  

So, that makes 10 cards total, which is not quite up to the usual Nine Pockets numbers. However, I did create quite a few one-off customs for clients throughout the year, and I'm pretty happy with the way they turned out, so that's a plus.

 

Here's a closer look at a card front and a card back:

The Sitcom subset received special card backs that more closely resembled the style of the original set. Here's an example:

 

 

Those are always fun to do.

And as always, I'd like to get some of these cards into the hands of you fellow collectors. So let's do a giveaway.

The duck races that I've held for a couple of previous Nine Pockets giveaways seem to go over pretty well with readers, so I think I'll do that again. If enough folks enter, I'll award a custom card from the list above to the top 5 finishers. (Feel free to share this giveaway with other bloggers and collectors who might enjoy it.) Winners will get to choose which custom card they'd like.

To enter the giveaway, just add a comment to this post. That's all you have to do. I'll keep the entry period open through next Sunday, June 21st. Then I'll close it out and get those ducks ready to race. Results will be posted here on the blog on Sunday, June 28th.

  

Thanks so much to all you readers, fellow collectors, and fellow bloggers for spending some time here at Nine Pockets. You guys continue to provide great inspiration and entertainment, and I look forward to holding the giveaway and getting these custom cards out to the winners.

 

Great Hockey Photos AND Wise Advice? I'll Take It!

You know what I enjoy?

A good 1980s hockey police card set.

For one, they're rather plentiful.

They also provide excellent information on the card backs. Local police departments at the time would encourage kids to exercise, study hard in school, and develop self-esteem. They also warned us sternly about the dangers of hanging out with the wrong crowd, and of drugs and alcohol.

And a third reason? 

 

You'll find some surprisingly good photography. Check out this shot from the 1986-87 Washington Capitals Police set:

Now that's hockey action. 

Bob Carpenter is waiting for a shot to come in from the point. He'd love to try and redirect it with his stick blade or shaft and score a goal that way. But at very least, he's succeeded in making life difficult for Islanders goaltender Kelly Hrudey. Just look. Hrudey is trying his hardest to keep an eye on the play in front of him by crouching down and looking around Carpenter, while maintaining some sort of angle with the shooter. With all of that happening, the crowd behind the glass knows a scoring chance is coming. Just look at their focus!

Can you find this same kind of action in the 1986-87 Topps flagship hockey set? Fat chance!

And that's not all. Check out this next card:

 

 

 

I think more goal celebrations like this one should be featured on hockey cards. I love it because Lou Francheschetti and his teammates are not elated. They're not exuberant. They're just some blue collar players getting together after scoring a goal. 

 

Good job, guys.

 

And then it's back to work. 

 

The camera angle and proximity almost make you feel like you're celebrating right along with them. Fantastic.
 

 

Both of those cards are now in my collection, thanks to a small trade on TCDB. Here's the third card that was part of the trade.

 

 

 

Mike Gartner scored 708 career goals. He's a member of the Hall of Fame, and was selected as one of the NHL's 100 greatest players during the league's 100th anniversary in 2017-18. He was also one of the fastest skaters of his generation. Despite all this, I feel like he's underrated—or at least a little bit underappreciated. For all those reasons, I snatched up the card. I like how the image shows him in action, using that speed. 

 

Now here are the card backs, featuring some of that wise advice mentioned earlier.

 

 

Do police departments still have these kinds of programs today? If not, I think they should.

 

Regardless, I'm pretty happy to have these cards in my collection, and I think I might search around for examples from other teams to add.

 

With all that being said, however, I think it's only fair to mention that not every card in this police set is fantastic. The TCDB member I traded with was kind enough to add an extra card for me in the envelope. 

 

 

Who's there? Michal? Is that you? Tap your stick on the ice three times if that's you. 

(Taps stick on ice three times. Sound echoes through empty, dark hockey rink.)

 

Yep, that one's kind of a stinker. But think back to those flagship Topps and O-Pee-Chee sets of the era again. You'll find image after image of players standing around in warmups, or waiting for a face-off to start. So even with the few stinkers, you've still got to be impressed with police sets like these.

 

How about you readers and collectors? 

 

Do you have any police cards from a local team, be it hockey or another sport? Do any of the cards boast surprisingly good photography? 

 

Share in the comment section, and thanks for reading! 

Completed Set: 1989 Topps Baseball

Quick: Imagine the most generic baseball t-shirt you can.

It probably looks something like that one, right?

Well, I'll tell you something. It's exactly what the 1989 Topps design reminds me of. Just look at the bottom of this next card, for example.

It's so generic that Dallas Green appears to be wincing with disappointment.

And if you want to get the full thrust of it, here are the logos from the t-shirt and the card together, matched for color.

Same thing? 

Yeah. Pretty much.

And listen. It's not necessarily a bad thing. Baseball cards are about fun. And familiarity. And baseball. So if you were a baseball-playing kid back in 1989 and saw that the script team name on your Little League jersey looked very much like the script team names on the new Topps baseball cards that you were pulling from packs, you might have been psyched about it. After all, you can't have too much baseball in your life, right? So again, not a bad thing.

But for the 1989 version of Gregory Ninepockets, the design did seem a bit plain.

He had just started getting into the sport of ice hockey, and Topps hockey cards were much more interesting that year, with the pushpin design in the top corner and the Roy Lichtenstein–style dotted background underneath the player name.

So that didn't help young Gregory's opinion of 1989 Topps baseball cards.

You know what else didn't help?

The Upper Deck company.

They released their inaugural baseball card set that same year. And it was not plain.

I wonder how closely the new company kept everything under wraps back then. Just imagine the team at Topps finishing up production of their 1989 baseball set and feeling pretty good about it. Then imagine them seeing Upper Deck's set for the first time, with its foil pack wrappers, bright white card stock, hologram technology, and full-color images on the card backs.

I can picture a Topps exec opening his first Upper Deck pack that year, and reacting like this as he flipped through each card:

I know many of us kids back then reacted in a similar way when we saw Upper Deck cards for the first time.

In any case, let's look at some 1989 Topps cards, because that's really what we're here for today. And there's some goodness to be had.

Topps was always solid when it came to providing us with some classic batting stance photos.

Same for the pitching poses. The photographers made Goose look 10 feet tall. And Jim Gott looks rather heroic from that angle, don't you think?

Headshots abound in this set, which might seem boring. But oftentimes the players are very happy. I like that in a baseball card. To reiterate: Baseball is fun.

You know what else is fun?

Subsets!

And 1989 Topps gives us a few good ones.

The #1 Draft Pick cards were pretty cool for young collectors, and showed players in their college uniforms. (Or in the case of Steve Avery, high school!) Topps earns a little bit of credit there.

The rookie cup subset featured some big names at the time, too. (See how nice it is when the cup is always tucked in the bottom corner like that?)

The All-star design continued the generic script theme, but fancied things up a little bit.

The Team Leaders subset returned, and for the fourth year in a row, Topps went with the same cloud-like border. But that repetitiveness almost doesn't matter, because these cards tell the story of baseball so well. Bonus points to the Topps photographer who captured the "Bash Brothers" doing their thing on the Oakland A's card.

Topps also brought back some other favorite subsets, like Record Breakers and Turn Back the Clock. As for the checklist, it felt slightly more modern than standard.

Speaking of more modern, the Future Star cards received a new design. Sheffield, Jefferies, and Alomar were all highly sought after back then.

And on the subject of young stars, Topps did get some good rookies into the base set. In addition to Sheffield and Alomar up there, Biggio, Johnson, and Smoltz would all end up having Hall-of-Fame careers. 

The glaring omission, of course, was Ken Griffey Jr. Most of the other major brands did manage to get him into their base sets, so it was disappointing to young collectors that Topps missed the boat there. (The Topps Traded set was where you'd find Griffey Junior, along with other stars like Deion Sanders, Tom Gordon, and Omar Vizquel.)

But let's get back to the good stuff.

There are some nice action shots to be found throughout the base set.

And some cool cards featuring players with their choice of lumber.

Players with glasses were still a thing, too.

In addition, some excellent color matching occurs in this set. I think a binder page filled with 9 players from any of the teams above would look pretty sweet. (Other teams leave something to be desired. For example, the Angels have a magenta-purple-yellow thing going on, while the orange and blue Mets almost had something special until Topps gave them a red border for some reason.)

Anyway, let's look at a card back now.

The good stuff continues here. Not only is the black text fairly easy to read on that light pink background, but Topps added an interesting little table at the bottom of many cards. The "monthly scoreboard" section allowed us to go a little deeper into the stats of our favorite players, showing total home runs and RBI per month. For pitchers, the table displayed wins and strikeouts per month.

So that's 1989 Topps baseball. Fun, and some good qualities, but if I'm completely honest? A little bit underwhelming.

Regardless, I'm happy to have this set completed and checked off the list. 

How about you readers? If you were collecting back in 1989, how did you feel about the Topps baseball release? And how do you feel about it these days?

Share in the comment section, and thanks for reading!