Mint! (The cards with the hole)

The blog title is a riff on an old advertising slogan for Polo mints, which were described as "the mint with the hole". What happened to the holes? Nobody knew. Then the manufacturer started selling little tubs of tiny mints called Polo holes. 

This blog post is actually about Pinnacle Mint, cards that were sold with holes in. Well, some of them. Pinnacle Mint was a set that combined cards and metal coins. It wasn't a totally novel idea. Topps had made coins previously. But the combination, and the idea of using the cards to hold the coins was something different.

Card Number 854: Pinnacle Mint, 1997; #21

This is the base card. See the big hole? That was to fit a coin in. Each packet came with two cards and one coin.

Obviously punching a big hole in a card means there is less space on the card for factoids or stats. Pinnacle binned off the stats and kept the factoid to a concise three lines. 

There were four different coins to collect in the packs - bronze, nickel, silver plated and gold plated. There were also 'redemption' coins that could be claimed in either solid silver of solid gold. Richard included one of the bronze coins from this set in the recent parcel that he sent me. Here is what it looks like mounted in the card.

There were also three parallel versions of the cards with large foil coin-sized stamps on them, also in bronze, silver and gold. 

Card Number 855: Pinnacle Mint (Bronze), 1997; #21

The big foil stamp is only on the front. This means the back of the card is surprisingly clean.

Presumably this was a reasonably successful range for Pinnacle, as Mint made a reappearance in 1998, which would turn out to be Pinnacle's last year of trading.

Card Number 856: Pinnacle Mint, 1998; #8

This 'boxy' background design is similar to several other Pinnacle ranges in 1998.

On the back Pinnacle decided to opt for stats over multiple photos. There is a lovely portrait of Tony and a clever way of displaying his season stats as well.

Although this card gains bonus points for the way the stats are laid out, I'm going to ding it a point for splitting the factoid either side of the big hole. If they had gone for two sentences, one on each side, then it would have looked better.

I have yet to acquire the coin from 1998 to display in the hole. But I do have the bronze parallel of this card, as Pinnacle went all parallel-happy again. 

Card Number 857: Pinnacle Mint (Bronze), 1998; #8

This time the space on the back of the card that would have been the hole has been filled with the team logo.

This was the last year that Pinnacle Mint was produced. The company went belly up in the autumn. The Pinnacle brand has since been purchased and semi-revived as one of the zombie brands that Panini have reanimated. Of the many sub-brands that Pinnacle had, it seems very unlikely that the Mint concept of cards and coins will ever be brought back by Panini. But who knows what the future holds!

Total: 857 cards

One Vid Only - Opening a box from Richard (YoRicha)

I have been very fortunate while doing this blog that other collectors have got in touch and sent me cards all the way from America. Tim from Pennsylvania, Jeff from North Dakota, and now Richard from Georgia. 

If you read the comments on here, Richard often comments on posts as YoRicha. A little while back he said he had some things to send me and late on Friday I picked up an unexpectedly large box from the post office after the postman stuck a note through my door telling me to go and collect it.

I decided to do an 'unboxing' video on my phone, just for fun. However, when I uploaded it to YouTube it would only load as a portrait video for some reason. YouTube has removed the functionality to rotate videos, which is irritating. I have wasted too much time trying to fix the problem, which I think is probably down to an old phone and incompatible tech. Oh, well. 

My suggested fix for you is to watch this video on a phone or tablet and physically change the orientation of the device if you want to see me the right way up!

There was a huge box of cards in the box. Here's a better look.

Richard also included a note:

That is such a nice thing to say. There are a few people who comment on the blog regularly and I appreciate them taking the time to leave a note (or do my research for me!). I'm really glad people enjoy it and with Richard's help I am going to be blogging throughout the winter at this rate!

Back when I started this blog I had almost 200 cards scanned waiting for me to write about them. I'd barely dented that when I acquired over 200 more cards, which I scanned and gradually worked my way through. Since the turn of the year I have been blogging on a more ad hoc basis, as cards arrive. However, with the parcel from France, the envelope of cards from Jeff this week, and now this massive box of cards from Richard, I'm going to be back on that daily publishing schedule. 

As long as I can carve out the time to write the posts, of course.

I did promise in that video that I would let you know what my grand total of Tony Gwynn cards is now. Well, I don't want to deal in spoilers, but the cards from Richard took me into four figures! So I have a lot of catching up to do with my blogging!

(Also, I was wrong about the coin - it wasn't a Topps coin. All will be revealed in good time!)

Thank you again, YoRicha!