Well, I Guess It’s Safe To Say the Book Value Will Never Dip Below 25¢
March 16th, 2012 by slangon

I’ve had these, uh, cards, I guess, in my possession for quite a while. Probably slightly longer than when I got back into collecting a couple of years back. My mother-in-law had given them to me for Christmas. She has long been a keen supporter of my love of the Mets and it was more due to that than any support of my love of baseball cards.

These were released by Dunkin Donuts in 2006 as part of a celebration of the 20th Anniversary of the 1986 World Champion Mets team. I find that to be a bit of an odd choice for a promotional item seeing how Dunkin Donuts was founded in Quincy, Massachusetts and is still headquartered in that state. This card, if you want to call it that, is roughly the size of a drink coaster, although not nearly as absorbent. I personally question the choice of photo on this particular card. It looks to me like Mex just finished up an ugly swing and miss. I would have to think that there had to have been some better picture choices, but maybe I’m a little biased since Keith is my favorite player. Here’s the back.

As you can see, the back is chock full of standard baseball card ingredients. A short bio. Stats. The usual. I think it’s sort of a nice touch that they only included Keith’s ’86 stats, seeing how it’s commemorating that particular season. I also like that whoever designed these kept the branding to a relative minimum. There’s the one smallish logo on the backside, but no mention of Donuts or Dunkin’ on the front.

That’s the card part of this particular promotion, but that’s not the main act. The whole reason for the card, or disc, or whatever is to more or less serve as packaging for this.

Yessir. Dunking Donuts actually took a legal tender United States quarter and printed a Keith Hernandez graphic on the front side. I thought that defacing U.S. currency was technically illegal, but whatever. It’s a little hard to make out old George’s head in the center, but you can clearly make out the “United States of America” and “Quarter Dollar” showing through around the edges. Although I am a big fan of not reusing the same image over and over, considering that the one used on the card is kind of lame, I would’ve preferred that they had just used this image on both items. The back of the coin has nothing fancy going on, but it is a New York quarter, which makes sense in a pretty obvious way.

The card and coin came packaged together in a plastic wrapper, thusly:

I’m not sure why I never opened the Strawberry one. I assure you it wasn’t out of any nerdy “Oh, it’ll be worth so much more in it’s original packaging” sentiment. Anyway, aside from seeing how Dunkin Donuts packed the stuff up, you can also get a good idea of how big the cards are compared to the quarter. I’m also just realizing that they used the same image of Darryl on the card and the coin, in a cropped down way.

As is the case with any oddball card that I pick up, my first stop was the handy dandy Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards to see if I could find out any background on it. Aside from the usefulness of the checklists, my absolute favorite feature of that book is the short descriptions they give of the different sets. The particular copy that I happen to own is the 2010 edition, which has one section of the book dedicated to pre-1980 cards, another section of the book dedicated to cards from 1980-2000 and then all cards from after 2000 (including these cards) are covered in a PDF document that is on a disc that comes with the book.

Unfortunately, the PDF had no mention of any 2006 Dunkin Donuts Mets set, which even if it did probably wouldn’t have helped me since for some reason none of the post 2000 sets have any kind of descriptions attached to the entries. I found it a little surprising that the set wasn’t even in there, though, since the catalog covers tons of other team-specific issues over the years, whether they be cards or coins.

I was, however, through the magic of the interwebs able to track down the original press release put out by the Mets regarding the initial issue of the coins. According to that release, the set was to consist of New York State quarters featuring color images of 6 players from the 1986 Mets team to commemorate their ’86 World Series win.

The players to be featured, aside from Keith and Darryl, were Lenny Dykstra, Mookie Wilson, Sid Fernandez and the late Gary Carter. They were released 2 per week over the course of 3 weeks from June 19, 2006 through July 3, 2006. They originally sold for $2.99. In addition to those 6 coins, the first 25,000 fans at the June 16, 2006 game against the Orioles were to receive a special “team coin” that wasn’t available at stores along with a cadboard holder to house all the coins. The image attached to the press release only shows the 6 player coins and the back of a 7th, but doesn’t show the special give-away coin. I was able to track down an image of the full set off of eBay, nicely framed for your viewing pleasure.

Aside from giving a good view of the cardboard holder, you can make out the special give-away coin in the center there. It’s a little hard to see, but I think that’s pretty clearly just the Mets 1986-2006 logo that can also be seen larger at the top of the holder that’s on that coin. From what I saw on eBay, it seems like the individual coins/cards can be had for about $5 or $6 and a complete set with the holder and special coin will run you between $25 and $30. All in all, a neat little oddball Mets item, but I can’t say I really have any desire to track down any of them aside from the 2 that I have. Maybe if I didn’t already have the Hernandez one, I would try to get that for my player collection, but otherwise, I think I’ve got my fill.

6 Responses to “Well, I Guess It’s Safe To Say the Book Value Will Never Dip Below 25¢”

  1. Pretty cool!

  2. I vaguely remember these – I think I even have some or all of the ones that were available at Dunkin’ Donuts – but I haven’t thought about them since 2006.

  3. I remember seeing these for sale at my local DD and somehow resisted the urge to buy them, even though they had me in a weakened state of pre-coffeeness. Plus, I once got a Sid Fernandez in change from the 7-11; it holds a place of battered honor in my Mets coin collection.

  4. I was just cleaning out my desk and found my Lenny Dykstra still in the wrapping. I live inFL (near Pt St Lucie) and was visiting my brother in CT when I picked it up. I had completely forgotten about it. until today

  5. Are these quarters worth anything?

  6. I got the Hernandez one

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