The Vancouver Sun is promoting a new series of sports medallions depicting star players from the 2002/2003 Vancouver Canucks lineup. The colour photo player portraits superimposed on recycled card discs are being released one per day, and sold at select newspaper vendors.

Activa Promotions, a Toronto firm that specializes in sports related collectibles mass marketing, produced similar items for the Sydney, Australia Olympics, and the Montreal and Toronto markets, which garnered great interest from sports fans and collectors. The sports medals have the team name, player name, and jersey number, around the photo on one side, and the team logo on the other.

Medallion seekers are meant to redeem clip-out coupons for a free die cut glossy cardboard foldout album, emblazoned with the Sun logo, decorated with player statisitics, and featuring spaces for fourteen different player medallions, and a special antiqued bronze team logo medallion.

The medallions were announced with banner ads on the front page of the Thursday, March 27, 2003 Sun, and an accompanying multipage article beginning on the cover of the Sports section.

Bret Evans, of Canadian Coin News, and Shawn Wade, President of the University of British Columbia Coin and Stamp Club, were both interviewed regarding the collectibility of the Canucks medallions. Radio ads and repeated Sun banner ads reinforced the marketing campaign daily.

The Canucks are riding a record setting season, with their most regular season points, two players in the top five scorers, and the most home ice sellouts in franchise history. Several Canucks are expected to contend for the league scoring and most valuable player trophies.

The team captain Markus Naslund's medallion was released Friday March 28 through 338 B.C. Safeway, 7-11, and Chevron Town Pantry outlets. There was a coupon in the morning paper, that could be exchanged, with $2.99, plus applicable taxes, for the initial medallion. Distribution was initially a bit spotty as some merchants were not prepared for the early onset of medallion seekers.

Nevertheless, the Naslund medallions were certainly gone by Noon in most Vancouver outlets, and mobile Naslund hunters were ranging through the less trafficked suburban outlets looking for stray medallions. There seemed to be no per customer limits, so some buyers simply bought a stack of papers, redeemed the coupons, bought the medallions, and left the rest of the clipped newspapers behind.

The medallions come packaged in a small plastic bag, similar to a sportscard teamset holder, backed with an album-colour coordinated piece of card with the price and weight, (11 grams) copyright info, and the Canucks, N.H.L., and N.H.L.P.A., but no Vancouver Sun, logos.

An Ed Jovanovski medallion we acquired on the second day, Saturday, came double bagged in a larger ziploc style bag with an added label bearing the player's full name in capital letters. Perhaps the players names on the medals are too small for some distributors to read. That same Saturday, the Sun printed a bonus black coupon promising an other opportunity to get the sold out Naslund medallions.

Interested parties could buy the Naslund medal from the Sun's Vancouver corporate office lobby, while supplies lasted, starting Monday. According to a Tuesday, April 1 Sun article, a thousand people took advantage of the opportunity.

In the meantime, the medallion retailers were having trouble keeping up with the demand. Most medallions were sold out before 9am, and as early as 7am, daily. Collectors were phoning dealers looking for medallions they missed. Speculators were already auctioning medallions on eBay, partly inspired by Sun stories citing quick bucks to me made this way.

In the Tuesday story, the Sun revealed that 312,000 medallions were made for this promotion, about 22,000 pieces for most players, but 25,000 for the more popular players. Presumably the star players will be offered on Fridays and Saturdays when the accompanying paper is at its best and can better attract new subscribers.

Olympians Naslund and Jovanovski were the first Friday and Saturday offerings. Will this promotion attract younger readers to the Vancouver Sun? It is certainly building traffic to the participating retailers. The collectors may, of course, just be buying the papers and medallions and leaving without buying anything else. Awareness of the program participants is being created nevertheless. Best of all, interest in collectibles is being generated.

Seldom do the Sun, Safeway, 7-11, and Chevron promote collecting in concert. Canadian Coin News and the U.B.C. Coin and Stamp Club do not usually get mentioned in the well read Sports section.

Sportscard and coin collectors, as well as Canucks fans are pursuing these medallions. They do this for the same reasons collectors always do: the thrill of the chase, the satisfaction of completing a goal, the pride in having something the kid down the block does not have, and the possibility of profit at some point.

Could not our Mint and Post Office benefit from similar promotional activities? Some will argue such endeavours are best left to the private sector, but others may see a win-win opportunity to market better recognized collectibles.

Go Canucks Go.

Some Markus Naslund and Tod Bertuzzi medallions available here.

Newsletter #40
Ancient Coins of the Middle East

5630 Dunbar St. at 41st Ave.
Vancouver, BC, V6N 1W7

Phone: 604-684-4613 Fax: 604-266-4515

e-mail: collect@direct.ca

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