Coin a prized possession 50 years after Rich Stadium opened

The Buffalo Bills handed out thousands of commemorative coins to the late-arriving crowd on the night that Rich Stadium opened, 50 years ago this month. Most of these plastic, faux-gold coins are now, no doubt, lost to time.

Bob Downey still has his, though. He uses it as a ball marker on the greens when he plays golf.

Paul Moloney has his, too. He placed it under glass on a bar top decades ago.

Highmark Stadium, which began its life as Rich Stadium, turns 50 this week.

The Bills lost that first preseason game in their new stadium on Aug. 17, 1973, as Washington kick returner Herb Mul-Key baptized the joint with a 102-yard TD on the opening kick.

“I remember thinking, ‘Are you kidding me?’ ” Downey says.

Other golfers often ask about that plastic coin: “And I say, ‘Well, take a look.’ And when they see it, they want it. And I say, ‘Don’t touch that!’ I’ve had it all these years, and I want to keep it for many more.”

Moloney surrounded his coin under the glass of the bar top with other ephemera – Peace Bridge tokens, poker chips, foreign coins, Chuck E. Cheese tokens, pennies by the dozens.

“We play a ‘Where’s Waldo’ game of ‘find the whatever’ under the glass,” he says. “You don’t need to look too far for the stadium coin. It’s got a prominent place, front and center.”

The coin is 1½ inches in diameter, about the size of a silver dollar. The front shows an etching of the stadium with the words “The New Home of the Buffalo Bills.” The back has the names of the teams and the date of the game.

“I had a lot of angst about which side of the coin to show,” Moloney says. (He could have decided with a flip of the coin but wisely chose the stadium side.)

A cardboard certificate about the size of a baseball card came with the coins. At the top it says: “I WAS THERE.” Saxon Graham had his laminated.

“I keep it in my desk drawer” at his house in Tampa, he says. “It’s a nice reminder of home.”

And, of course, of that home opener.

The Buffalo News recently asked its readers to share their memories of the day Rich Stadium hosted its first Buffalo Bills game. Here's what they had to say.

Dwight Jenkins has his coin, too. He attended that inaugural game with his high school classmate, Nancy Donovan – daughter of Eddie Donovan, then general manager of the Buffalo Braves.

Tom Ruh, like most of us there that night, has no idea what happened to his coin: “I lost it somewhere along the line.” He does hold on to memories of that night, though.

Graham, Jenkins and Ruh are members of the Class of 1973 at Orchard Park High School. These days, all three live in the Tampa-St. Pete area. They all recently attended their 50th high school reunion at Wings Meeting Place – just a few Josh Allen long balls away from what is now known as Highmark Stadium.

“We talked at the reunion about how our graduation came right before the stadium opened,” Ruh says. “And how now here they are building a new one.”

That opening night, in 1973, is infamous for the epic traffic jam that kept some fans from their seats until halftime. Not so with Graham, Jenkins and Ruh. All three got to their seats well before Mul-Key’s party-crashing kick return.

Jenkins parked at a lumber yard two miles from the stadium, and he and his date walked past vast lines of backed-up cars. Ruh parked on California Road, near where Wings Meeting Place is now, and cut over a creek and through a field.

“It helps to know the backroads,” he says.

“We had home-field advantage,” Jenkins says.

Today, Jenkins and Graham are Bills season ticket holders from afar. Jenkins has had his seats for 42 years, Graham for 28 years. He takes Ruh to one game every season. “We’re going to the (Tampa Bay) Bucs game,” Graham says. “Of course.”

Graham was selected as the fan to announce the Bills’ seventh-round choice in the 2018 NFL draft. (Alas, wide receiver Austin Proehl did not make the team; he plays currently for the XFL’s St. Louis BattleHawks.)

Herb Mul-Key earned his 15 minutes of fame in 15 seconds. He’s the Washington kick returner who found the end zone before most Bills fans had found their seats on the mid-August night when Rich Stadium opened 50 years ago Thursday.

Jenkins once went 23 seasons without missing a game. He still gets to five or six games each season from Florida. Graham gets to about that many as well. They hope to continue for years to come, though they say that will depend on the as-yet-unknown cost of personal seat licenses at the new stadium.

Jenkins and his wife, Carol, moved to Tampa in 2006, but they bought a second home in East Aurora a few years ago to be near kids and grandkids. Ruh and his wife, Ruth, moved to Tampa in 2007, but last year bought a second home back in Orchard Park, also to be near kids and grandkids.

Jenkins married Carol on Aug. 17, 1985, so they share an anniversary with the stadium formerly known as Rich.

“It’s a date I never forget,” he says.

He attended the recent Bills-Colts preseason game. At the airport, he ran into Joe DeLamielleure, the Hall of Fame guard who had been in town for Jim Kelly’s golf tournament. Jenkins reminded DeLamielleure that he had mowed the Bills lineman’s lawn in Orchard Park for a couple of summers in the mid-1970s.

“He said, ‘I hope I paid you well,’ ” Jenkins says. “I told him he did pay well – and sometimes he tipped with tickets.”

Downey, the fan who has used his commemorative coin as a golf-ball marker for all these years, hopes they’ll hand out new coins on opening night of the new stadium, expected in 2026.

“If they do,” he says, “I’ll make sure to go.”

Maybe this time, though, the Bills should think about squibbing the opening kick.

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