.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kennywood,

I allways assumed it was the equivalant of Inkworks one in every three boxes sort of card.

Back in the days before autographs, it was the rarest card in the set.

If I remember correctly, this was a card that was inserted something like one every three or four boxes of a card product. It usually was a different image than other cards in the set, with a printed medallion on the back. It was generally numbered out of something like 500 or 1000, so it was somewhat rare. I think these tended to be mostly in Comic Images products (Conan, Boris, stuff like that). I find they are generally not hard to locate on the auction site, for pretty reasonable prices.

As Will said, it was one of Comic Images insert card types. I don't think anyone else every used the term. There's a picture of a GI Joe Medallion Card on this page.

BORIS Medallion Cards, fronts & backs. The 1st is from BORIS 4, the other two are from BORIS ALL-CHROMIUM:

What's more I have noted a trend in pricing these cards on Ebay. The closer the card number is to card #1 (or conversely the last card in the limited edition) the higher the price. A single digit card will always command a much higher price than a middle-order number.
Human nature for the demand of being the 'first' I suppose.

It looks like Comic Images first used the medallions in the late-1993 Sorayama 2 set. I found 41 series through 1995. Not all of them were numbered, and a few sets had both numbered and unnumbered versions as pack-pulls. When the distribution is known, ithe early sets were mostly 2:case (1:6 boxes) and the later sets were mostly 4:case (1:3 boxes).

those were the good old days
you could buy a box real cheap and make 3-5 base sets and get some chase cards

I remember the "old days" when collectors were complaining about too many base sets in a box thus resulting in sets worth under $5 and no place to store them.

I remember the "old days" (early 1995) when I bought 3 boxes of Prince Valiant cards by Comic Images, and pulled from them ALL of the chase cards, the medallion card, and 2 redemptions for the autos (only 500 autos made)

Maybe they didn't release many boxes ?

I have many Medallion cards. All from Comic Images.
The quality of the images on the cards was always high def.
Ace