The article on Shell Oil's President's Game brought back a lot of memories. My family always bought gasoline at Shell stations, and we acquired many of those pieces during the program's run. We never won anything, as the winning medals were carefully rationed. As I recall, the key to the grand prize was Warren G. Harding. I never heard of anyone finding that particular medal.

Each piece was sealed in a white, plastic envelope, and the older boys called them rubbers. Being only ten at the time, I didn't know what galoshes had to do with it. A couple teenagers in the neighborhood showed up with a bonanza of several hundred sealed medals one day, claiming that they'd found them in the sewer. Even I was smart enough to surmise that they were probably stolen from a station, which would have been in keeping with their general demeanor, but it was still quite an exciting event nonetheless. Not a single Harding turned up in that hoard, though there were enough pieces for some lower value prizes.

Customers could win a complete set of the medals in brass as one of the prizes, but I don't know anyone who did. A fellow coin collector among my circle of fifth-grade numismatists received a brass set that his parents had purchased from Shell through the mail, but I don't remember the selling price.

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
SHELL'S MR. PRESIDENT COIN GAME TOKENS (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v19n35a31.html)