To the oddball binder!

This is the inside back cover of my oddball binder. These aren't all of the oddballs though. There are oddballs in the front back cover, too. And there is another binder of slightly less oddballs. And there's an overflowing box of oddballs in an entirely different room. And, of course, I have oddballs just hanging out in the open waiting for me to figure out what to do with them.

But I like this particular collection of oddballs, just for the way it looks. That's a lot of variety, of items that either don't fit, are too flimsy, are unidentifiable, or just don't work in the traditional page format.

I went directly to this binder earlier today to fetch the oddball baseball-looking cards that are front-and-center in this picture.

Bert of Swing And A Pop-Up sent me a couple of those 1970s disc cards and I wanted to see if I could upgrade this:

Sure, I like ice cream like everyone else, but when I have a chance to eliminate a stain, I'm all for it. Especially when that stained card is of my favorite player.

So, lucky me, Bert sent me this:

"Bingo!" I thought. A fresh-and-clean version of The Penguin.

But you astute readers may have noticed a difference in the copyright on the right side of the disc.

And you card historians probably know that these discs came under a wide variety of names in the '70s.

I knew that, too. I just had to be reminded. So what I have is ...

... a 1976 Zip'z disc and a 1977 Isaly's disc. There's your 1970s-style variations for you.

I have no idea how many different versions of these things there are. I don't have the time today to find out. And, depending on how many there are, I'll ponder collecting all of the backs.

I do know there is at least one other because of the other disc that Bert sent:

The Garvey resembles the Garvey disc that I have except in one obvious area.

This is a Crane Potato Chips disc.

The difference on the backs:

The discs that I saw when I was a kid came with wiffle ball bats. Quite frankly, I had never heard of Crane Potato Chips or Zip'z ice cream before I obtained these cards.

I never knew Isaly's either. And Sweet William Family Restaurants? Not a peep until I flipped over the disc.

A quick look tells me Isaly's owned Sweet William, and although neither are around much, they apparently still exist in the western Pennsylvania area. Crane Potato Chips no longer exists. There's a Zipz ice cream place in Chicago, but I have no idea whether it's the same thing that appears on the back of the cards.

I apologize that this isn't very informative. It's way too hectic around here to do any in-depth research.

But Bert did send me a card I have no problem identifying:

I was digging to the bottom of a box of Kellogg's just about every other week for one of these oddballs.