In 1997-98, Pinnacle Brands gave the collecting world something to really sink their teeth into.. They released a couple of sets called "Mint Collection." Here's the premise: Sell packs of cards with holes in them and include coins in the pack. Collectors would have to match the cards to the coins. To keep life simple, they only produced a set of 30 in 1997. BUT, boys and girls, there's a catch! See, they kicked out a ton of Brass coins, and then held back on the Silver and Gold coins. This means that each card could have three coins for it, and it was up to the collector to decide which of the coins they REALLY wanted...
There were also variations of the cards that already had "coins" in them, which were really just foil inlays. These came in Bronze, Silver, and Gold. But, really, we wanted the actual COINS!
Here's a Junior card with coin, available on eBay for about a buck.
This Clemens is also on eBay, but this is the 1998 version. The 98's had more 'parallels' (imagine that, parallel versions of an oddball-type set), still held the checklist to 30 players, and yes, you had to collect the coins for the die-cut versions. These coins came in all kinds of variety from Nickel Proof to Gold Proof and also varieties of plating. Leave it to Pinnacle Brands to make things... Well... Guaranteed Scarce! Too bad they folded shortly after this....
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