[zeprock]

I mentioned before that I collect anything baseball related that will fit in a pocket of one of my nine pocket pages. POGs qualify. These aren't valuable at all but they are just fun. POGs, also known as "Milk Caps" were a game from the early to mid 90s. To play, each participant contributed an equal amount of POGs which were stacked in a tower and then the players would take turns throwing a heavier POG known as a "Slammer" down on top of the stack sending the POGs scattering. All those that landed face up were kept by the thrower and all others would be restacked for the next player. The winner was declared as the player who ended up with the most POGs once they were all distributed. Of course this led to hurt feelings and angry moments on the schoolyards which led to the game being banned in many schools, not unlike marbles in my day. Do you know what POG stands for? That's correct! Passionfruit, orange and guava, the brand of juice that the bottle caps originated from. I don't have a lot of POGs and am always keeping my eyes open for more to add to my collection. Here are a few that I have.

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1993 C.C. Made in USA Baseball and Bat POG #NNO
1993 Softball with Bat and Glove POG #NNO
1993 Baby Dinosaur POG #88 (The first three POGs pictured here are difficult for me to identify. They all have blank backs. Back in 2016, I was between tv jobs and drove a FedEx Home Delivery truck for the summer. One of the benefits was that I was on the road alone and could take my time as long as I made all of my deliveries within the day. Another benefit was that I could stop at every single yard sale and garage sale I drove by, which I pretty much did. It was at one of these yard sales where I found a box filled with more than a hundred POGs and I stood there shuffling through all of them looking for anything "baseball". That's where I picked up these first three POGs as well as the 1994 POG. The woman asked for a nickel for all four and I gave her a dime. I think they are great oddball additions to my collection.)
1993 Island Art POG Promo #NNO Nolan Ryan (This POG is also blank backed and promotes Island Art. There is also a Frank Thomas in this set as well as Shaquille O'Neal, Emmitt Smith and Troy Aikman.)
1994 World POG Federation Canada Games Series II #13 (I picked this one up with the first three pictured at a yard sale. This one has a WPF logo on the back. The World POG Federation was probably the biggest seller of milkcaps in the UK. Most of the WPF POGs feature the POG mascot pictured here, called POGMAN.)
1995 Megacards Griffey Jr. Wish List Megacap #2 Ken Griffey Jr. (This POG came with my set of 1995 Megacards Griffey Wish List cards. You could receive one of three different Megacaps with the purchase of a complete set.)
1995 Megacards Ruth 100th Anniversary MegaCaps #3 Babe Ruth (To celebrate Ruth's 100th Anniversary, Megacards also issued a Babe Ruth set and each complete set came with one of three limited edition Megacaps.)

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1993 Ted Williams POG Cards #8 Cleveland Buckeyes/Detroit Stars (The inaugural set of the Ted Williams Card Company was actually the brainchild of Ted's son, John Henry who was always seeking to exploit his father's fame in order to build up his own inheritance. I met John Henry once in the 1990s as he was temporarily a roommate with one of my co-workers at the tv station I worked for at the time in Bangor, Maine. My co-worker was renting an apartment in a house that my Aunt and Uncle lived in back in the 1970s and when I told him that fact, he invited me over. It was rather surreal being back in the same house after 20+ years. My entire conversation with John Henry consisted of us exchanging the word, "Hi." These blank backed POGs were included as an insert to that set and came two to a card and were perforated so that they could be punched out. These two feature the logos of a couple of Negro League teams of which Ted had an affinity for.)
1993 Ted Williams POG Cards #23 Lou Gehrig/Ted Williams