1984 7-Eleven Slurpee Coins

By Patrick Mondout

Convenience store chain 7-Eleven produced plastic picture cups featuring sports stars for their Slurpee beverages throughout the Super70s and in to the early Awesom80s. Kids seemed to like the cups, and they may well have increased their sales. But at a time when baseball cards were starting to really take off, the cups were being almost totally ignored by collectors.

Perhaps looking for something that would be more valued by collections, 7-Eleven introduced 1¾" diameter cardboard/plastic discs (or coins) as part of a promotion in Southern California in 1983. The 12 coins featured players from the Los Angeles Dodgers and California Angels.

The discs had one cool feature that set them apart from previous coin issues. The discs could be tilted to reveal a second picture. There was usually a head shot of the player coupled with an action shot. While they had a ribbed plastic coating like the 3D Kellogg's cards of the era, they actually had more in common with the Sportsflics cards of the future. Instead of trying to give the a 3D appearance to the cards, the technology was used to show more than one image. Because of the similarity in the feel of the coins, some mistakenly refer to them as 3D coins.

The discs were distributed one at a time with cardboard Slurpee containers under a false bottom. That is, the coins were randomly placed under a piece of cardboard that fitted over the bottom of the cup. There was a small cutout on the extra piece of cardboard for you to get your finger nail under in order to pry the coin loose. This made it difficult, but not impossible, to figure out which coins were in which cup.

Flipside The backs of the coins were simple, but at least had some career stats. One minor annoyance was that although the discs were numbered, they used Roman numerals! I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize to my second grade teacher, Mrs. Ball: I'm sorry I ever doubted you.

The promotion in Los Angeles must have gone well because Seven-11 took it national in 1984, producing three regional sets of 24 coins each. The three regions were the West, the Central, and the East. The first six players were the same in all regions while the remaining 18 were supposedly from those regions. The unusual Major League team alignments (Atlanta in the NL West, for example) led to some unusual 7-Eleven lineups. While the Braves Bob Horner did attend Arizona State University, how many fans in California or the Pacific Northwest were excited to get his West-region coin?

The 1985 set was even more ambitious, with five regions instead of three plus a fourteen disc set of the World Champion Tigers distributed in Detroit. The discs, which largely followed the design of earlier years, featured three pictures instead of just two.

The 1986 set was reduced to four regions and there were three players on each disc with the exception of very popular Dwight Gooden, who had his own disc in all regions. The non-Gooden discs were themed: One featured "Home Run Champs" Mike Schmidt, Dale Murphy and Jim Rice. Another featured two guys who should feel lucky to have been immortalized on such a coin, "Bullpen Rookies" Karl Best and Stewart Cliburn. They combined for 11 saves in their careers (Steve Ontiveros, the third ace on the coin only had 19, but he did make an All-Star team in the mid 1990s).

The company would produce its last five-region Slurpee set of the Awesome80s in 1987. They started up again in the early 1990s with the help of Score.

You can also find oversized 4" promo coins of such players as Dave Winfield and Dale Murphy. These were used in stores to promote the coins and often have glue damage on the back (which is blank in any case) as a result.

1984 7-Eleven at a Glance Back Back Back Murray Stieb Seaver

Here is a checklist of the 1984 discs:

Share Your Memories!

What are your memories of the 1984 7-Eleven Slurpee Coins cards? Share your stories with the world! (We print the best stories right here!)