Well, not the wheaties on the reverse of our older Lincoln pennies but a promotion that Wheaties® did some time in the 1950s.
The various coins were wrapped in cellophane, and the one side had a rather concise listing of the country’s capital, area, population, resources, industries, agriculture, monetary units and the denomination of the coin inside. This wrapper proved to be very safe as most all of these coins appear to be BU, and the Angola pair catalog at $10 and $25 respectively in the current edition of the
Standard Catalog of World Coins – 20th Century.
I have no idea of how many different coins made up a complete series, but with only my dad and myself eating Wheaties® as much we could, we didn’t get far until the promotion ended. As most dates are under the printed side, I’ll list the dates I can observe.
Angola – 10 Centavos 1948, 20 Centavos 1948
Ceylon – 2 Cents 1951, 5 Cents, 10 Cents 1951
France – 1 Franc
Haiti – 5 Centimes
St. Pierre & Miquelon – 1 Franc 1948
Switzerland – 1 Centime
Tunisia – 1 Franc 1945 (circulated)
Turkey – 1 Kurus, 2-1/2 Kurus
The following is an e-mail received in response to this entry:
Hi Colin,
I was at a local coin show yesterday and a dealer had a large collection of sealed wheaties coins, so I made a list of what he had.
Angola 10 centavos KM-70 1949, 20 centavos KM-71 1948
Austria 2 groschen KM-2876 1952
Belgium 20 centimes KM-146 1953
Bolivia 1 boliviano KM-184 1951-H
Ceylon 2 cents KM-119 1951, 5 cents KM-113.2 1944, 10 cents K-121 1951
Cyprus 1/2 piastre KM-29 1949
Denmark 10 ore KM-841.1 1954
Ecuador 10 centavos KM-76b 1946
Finland 1 markka KM-36a 1954
Germany 1 pfennig KM-105 1950
Haiti 5 centimes KM-59 1953
Honduras 1 centavo KM-77.2 1954
Iceland 1 eyrir KM-8 1953
India 1 pice KM-1.3 1951 (B)
Italy 5 lire (KM-92 1954)
Luxembourg 25 centimes KM-45 1947
Norway 1 ore KM-398 1954
Pakistan 1 pice KM-1 1948
Portugal 10 centavos KM-583 1953
St. Pierre 1 franc KM-1 1948
South Africa 1 farthing KM-44 1953
Switzerland 1 rappen KM-46 1952
Turkey 1 kurus KM-881 1949, 2 1/2 kurus KM-885 1948
Best wishes,
Joseph Zaffern