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Common game coin (more accurately 'medallion'). Fourteen different
race cars are featured on the coins. |
Hot Wheels Coin Game was a promotional game issued by the Shell Oil Company in 1972. This was a collect-and-win game with instant winners. There were four different cash prizes, and you could also win toy Hot Wheels cars. With each visit to a Shell station, customers received a free game 'coin' with the image of a race car on it. Fourteen different cars are featured on the coins. The coins could be mounted on a game card (also free). When all the coins in a section of the game card were collected ... or if you received an 'INSTANT WINNER' coin ... you won the prize for that section.
There is an interesting element in this game that is clever and unusual. Players could choose to save all their coins hoping to get a key coin and win a big prize, or they could redeem any five coins and receive a toy Hot Wheels car. That's a peculiar dilemma for the player. Consider the game card below. There are eleven coins mounted on the game card. The owner of the card had the option to redeem ten of them and get two toy Hot Wheels cars but, if they did, it would spoil their chance to win a bigger prize. The owner apparently chose to hold on to them. The game ended and none of them were redeemed. (Shell used this same 'cash in your common coins' feature for a short time at the beginning of their 'Famous Facts & Faces' game in 1968.)
The game ran from 10/1/72 through 12/22/72 and only at 350 Shell stations in the state of Indiana. Over 2,000,000 game pieces were issued but, because even the common game coins could be redeemed for a prize, the quantity of surviving game coins is much lower than other games of this type. The 'key' prize-winning coins were issued in small quantities (see table below) and are quite scarce today. This is because most were redeemed for prizes during the game. I have only seen or heard of four unredeemed key coins in the hands of collectors (I have one of them).
Cash prizes were $1, $10, $100 and $1,000. There is a 'key' car coin for each of the four cash prize sections. The key car coins, and their respective prize, are shown in the following table.
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