[zeprock]

For an oddball post today I went digging through my collection and tried to come up with nine items that you may have never seen before. These are truly oddballs.

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198? Shoe Tag #NNO 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings (The 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings were baseball's first professional team featuring ten salaried players. This is a tag that came attached to a new pair of sneakers I received back in the 1980s. The tag is the size of a standard baseball card so obviously I saved it in my collection. There are two Hall of Famers pictured in the group, founder, manager and center-fielder Harry Wright and his brother George.)
1990 Glove Tag #NNO Bo Jackson (I paid 50 cents for this at a yard sale. This originally came attached to a Franklin baseball glove. This tag was printed in Taiwan.)
1997 Cardwon Time People #NNO Ichiro Suzuki (This Taiwan card is the size of a credit card and made of hard plastic. It is a promotional item for the Taiwanese company Cardwon. I really don't know much else about it.)

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1997 Topps MTA Metrocard #NNO Jackie Robinson (This is a New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority MetroCard, issued in 1997 featuring Jackie Robinson. It was issued by Topps to commemorate Jackie's 50th anniversary in the Major Leagues. I remember seeing an offer to send away for this, which I did.)
1998 Morris Printing $70 Bill McGwire #NNO Mark McGwire (Morris Printing Company issued this bill to commemmorate McGwire's 70 home run season. It features the facsimile autographs of Mack A. Tack on the left and Vice President Sammy Salsa on the right.)
2003 Nantucket Nectars Bottle Cap (One summer day in 2003, my weightlifting partner and I took advantage of the nice day and blew off our lift, as we occasionally did, and went bass fishing. We'd put his small boat and trolling motor and our gear in the bed of his pickup and drive several miles north to Plymouth Pond in hopes of snagging some largemouth bass. We'd stop at a convenience store on the way for drinks and snacks and this one day, I bought a Nantucket Nectars fruit drink. When I pulled off the cap, there was this sentence underneath. In New England we'd heard that the Sox would win the World Series "next year" a lot so I didn't think much about it but did decide to save the cap. I'll be damned if the Sox didn't incredibly win it all in 2004. I'm sure it was only because I'd saved this cap the year before.)

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2004 Dunkin' Donuts Red Sox Gift Cards #NNO Fenway Park (Dunkin Donuts issued gift cards in 2004, some featuring the Red Sox logo and others featuring a shot of Fenway Park. I had a friend who owned one of the franchises and in 2005 I ran into him at my kid's school and asked him if he had any expired cards left over. He left a stack of them in my mailbox one day.)
2004 New Jersey Lottery Tickets #NNO New York Mets (This is a used lottery ticket from the New Jersey State Lottery. I also have one of these featuring the New York Yankees and another of the Philadelphia Phillies.)
2009 Enterplay Fan Pak Headliners #1 Derek Jeter (I believe these Fan Paks were sold in big box stores near the toy section. There are several different types of cards. Some can be folded so the players stand up. There were also tattoos and trivia cards as well as more standard cards in the set.)