Mets Card of the Week: 7-11 Keith Hernandez

1984 7-11 KEITH HERNANDEZ

Here’s a little relic from the Renaissance…

In the summer of ’84, 7-11 sealed these plastic coins in the base of Slurpee cups. If you shook an empty cup, you could hear the disc rattle around like a knock-hockey puck.

The fronts of the coins feature a dual “flicker” image that shifts between a portrait and an action photo when you change the viewing angle. The backs contain personal data and career stats, along with some 7-11 and Slurpee indicia.

7-11 distributed the coins regionally (Central, Eastern, and Western), so the New York cups contained mostly players from NL/AL East teams. (Six players were common to all three regional sets: George Brett, Andre Dawson, Dale Murphy, Eddie Murray, Mike Schmidt, and Robin Yount.)

I drove up and down Route 109 in July of ’84 visiting various 7-11s, buying unused Slurpee cups for the price of a Slurpee. The clerks were by turns amused, bemused, and confused.

But I was simply feeling reinvigorated in my role as a Mets’ fan, thanks in no small part to Keith Hernandez, a first baseman with power to the alleys and a gold glove.

Today, this little gimcrack is close to worthless as a collectible item.

But as a totemic reminder of the ’84 Mets, as a symbol of the rebirth of the franchise, it has value beyond measure…