TED WILLIAMS Never Looked so Good!
 
Very few of even the die-hard experts have seen this one.
1948, mid-way through the legendary 19-year career of baseball superstar Ted Williams, Nabisco cereal decided that Ted Williams could help them to increase the sales of their cereals.

So, the backs of the Nabisco Shredded Wheat cereal boxes began to display the Ted Williams “Baseball Action” ring. Just send in the coupon from the box along with one box top and .15 cents, and you will be in the game.

This ring gets multiple votes from me. It is one of the most intricate, good looking and coolest rings from within the Toy Premium Ring genre. It does something! It brought a baseball legend to life right on your finger. You don’t just look at it.

That said, it is also one of the most fragile of all the Toy Premium rings and very few (probably less than 50) have survived its nearly 80-year journey to today. Of those 50 I am going to speculate that maybe a dozen or so are intact, working and still in high-grade.

The ring is a gold-colored metal with an anti-tarnish finish. Secured to the ring base with a rivet that pivoted was a plastic batter to resemble Ted. At the base of Ted was a tab, and when you gently used your thumb to pull it back then let it go, Ted would swing his bat in true World Series form, hitting the ball that was held in the air by a thin wire. The side of the ring featured a design of crossed bats and ball in raised relief below an engraved Ted Wiliams autograph.

The problem with the ring was too many things could go wrong. The small plastic “Ted” figure was easily snapped off the base as soon as a kid sat down if he/she had it in their pocket. And the action was accomplished using a spring. We all know how that goes. You can never fix a spring that has sprung. So often the spring is missing, twisted, or over stretched and the mechanism no longer works. Also, the thin wire that held the ball was often mercilessly bent, and the ball was easily lost. Lastly, the gold-colored luster on the base easily wore off, from the dirt and sweat of being held.

Problems aside, if you can find one, it will surely become a favorite within your baseball collection. It has all the bells and whistles.

The 1995 Overstreet Toy Ring Price Guide has near mint examples at $900. Hard to say what today brings. I have seen both higher and lower. The main point is if you see one, GET IT!