I recently wrote about the Cheerios Dollars, which are the Sacagawea Dollars that were put into 5,500 lucky boxes of Cheerios cereal back in early 2000. These coins are fascinating because they were struck from a different set of dies than normal Sacagawea Dollars were struck from, and they're currently worth as much as $10k each because very few of them have come onto the market.
I should have foreseen the email avalanche I was about to be buried under! Although almost nobody can turn up a Cheerios Dollar these days, there are 10,000,000 Cheerios Pennies out there, and I feel like I've heard from fully half their owners! Most of them want to know how to get the $10,000 their coin is worth. I've had to break the bad news to these folks, that only the Cheerios Dollar coin is valuable. As for the Cheerios Penny? Well, it's not so bad that they might as well just go spend it, but as long they keep it on that little card, it's worth a few bucks on eBay. Then again, if they keep it on the little card, it'll probably get PVC damage from the plastic sealing it in. (Or are these cards made from archival-quality packaging by some chance? Does anybody know?)
I actually had a bear of a time finding a decent-quality photo of the Cheerios Penny on its little card. I finally tracked one down on an interesting site called X-Entertainment.com. The site is run by a fellow who collects (among other things) the junk that manufacturers put into cereal boxes for the kids to find. He has a page about the Millenios special edition collectible box on which he states that the Cheerios Penny and Dollar coin premiums were actually placed into five different kinds of cereal! Can anybody confirm this detail, and tell us which five cereals were included in the promotion?
Update: Reader Fred says (in the Comments below) that there were five different flavors of Cheerios, and that the coins were found in boxes of them all. The flavors included Honey Nut Cheerios, Team Cheerios, and maybe Frosted Cheerios. Fred also tells us that he used a metal detector on the boxes of cereal at the stores to tell which boxes might have the larger (dollar) coins in them! How devilishly clever! Thank you for sharing, Fred! :)
Cheerios Coins - Additional Reading
Photo by Matt C. of X-Entertainment.com, (used with permission.)
Comments
Cheerios one cent coins and one dollar coins were included in many different flavors of Cheerios, so that may be where the “5″ figure came from. Regular Cheerios, Honey Nut Cheerios, Team Cheerios, and a couple of others that I forget (”Frosted”?…). I used a metal detector with a sensitive tuning system. I set it to not “go off” when a cent was in the box, and to go off if any more metal than a cent was detected. I searched hundreds of boxes at stores in the wee hours of the morning as well as one Costco (a few pallets during the day). I alsways asked for persimssion and they seemed to be amused. I got one hit. I bought the box. There were 2 cent cards stuck together. I guess that proved my tuning of the detector was perfect. I detailed this years ago on the old USENET group news:rec.collecting.coins
What your thoughts of an “unopen box” of
Cheerios – with coin inside, think it may be
worth more than the cereal ?
Thanks Mark
With 5,500 you would think there’d be quite a few for sale. I suppose it is very possible that thousands were opened and spent.
I see Heritage Auctions sold one of these for $13,800 just last week. Cheerios Dollar
It looks like these were minted in Philadelphia. Did any other mints produce these or was it only Philadelphia?
mark: I am sure there is a market for a sealed box of Cheerios. The possibility of a dollar being inside would definitely command a premium.
I remember seeing someone sell an unopened box of Cheerios that had been saved from when they had the promotion. I think it was listed about a year ago and sold for more than $100.
For people who are looking for all types of collectible coins, there is a new search engine at http://www.searchforcoins.com.
It searches over multiple dealer web sites and eBay and provides coin specific search criteria such as grade, mint,
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It is also useful for finding market values.