Based upon my research, these discs were produced by MSA (Mike Schechter Associates) for various grocery store chains and bakeries. MSA produced several sets of these in the 80's and 90's from Fantastic Sam's to give away for free whenever you got a haircut, to Hostess potato chips, to Iced Tea. You will see what appears to be the exact same disc several times, with different company brands on it.
Most/all (I don't know) came in 3 panel perforated form, and many had an offer to allow you to send in some discs along with money in the mail to receive a promotional press sheet calendar. depicting the entire set, full size These calendars typically had the disc artwork in square form.
As calendars are not too collectible, and difficult to store, many have been cut down to squares, and sold off. Many of the cut square backs have the exact same statistic information on the reverse side, just like the discs. Many try to sell these off as "proofs", but the fact of the matter is that they are highly collectible in cut disc form.
The discs and squares both range from fairly easy to obtain, to extremely tough to get your hands on.
To me, there isn't a mind-blowing story on these that I have uncovered. It is fascinating, nonetheless, to know how the discs were produced & distributed, and what had to happen to get the cut square promos. Here is what I believe to be the entire run of MSA discs/squares of Jose Canseco. If you know of any that I am missing, please let me know! (It looks like a King B disc / square pairing made its way into this evening's showcase as well...whoops!)
These are the ones that I don't believe to have had the calendar offer for, so therefore there are no sister disc squares to match them with. If you know this to be wrong though, let me know!
Was there any particular method you used to make a list of these oddball sets? Is there some kind of Master List out there of these regional issues? I've thought about chasing some of these oddballs for various players like Kirby Puckett, Dave Winfield, Rickey Henderson, etc. but with all the other things out there to collect I haven't looked very hard.
ReplyDeleteThere is not any particular checklist to my knowledge, out there. For instance, for the STAR sets, the beckett annual lists maybe 3 or 4 sets from Canseco. I have probably 20+ sets and promos that are all different of his.
DeleteNot counting the STAR sets, I have around 500 different odd balls. I had a lot of them previously, and bought out a super collector who specialized in oddball stuff - he had been searching for 20+ years, and bought pretty much anything he came across he didn't have. For me, it is just filling in cracks that I didn't know were there to begin with.
I very rarely come across something odd that is a card or disc that I don't have.
You can check http://supercollectorcatalog.com/ (on FCB he is tpeichel - tell him mouschi sent you!)
Anyway, good luck! It is a BLAST collecting this stuff, and there is something about not always being about the new shiny serial #'ed game used autos being put out today.
right on - thanks!
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