another little stack of old restaurant plates, with a story??

I'm always a sucker for the occasional little stack of old restaurant china for cheap at Goodwill, especially when the pattern showing is anything remotely complimentary to my kitchen, which is an easy enough goal. ;-) This little bundle of 7pcs certainly qualified, being basically common off-white plates with a single slender dark red band around the rims. (COOL, I'll take those for $5...?!!) Note that the small plate in pic1 is just in a shadow, they're all the same color. :-)

Unwrapping them at home then revealed a few little surprises, as can often also be the case with little stacks like this. First, it turns out the one on the very bottom is actually a divided "grill plate" (I have more of those?!) together with a pair of plain 9" plates, three 7-1/4", and one 6-3/8". The second surprise is that all *but* the 6" plate are products of SYRACUSE CHINA while that small one is by SHENANGO -- you have to look very closely to realize the edge pattern on that one is indeed just slightly different than the rest.

I won't call the third difference a 'surprise' so much, that being the two different styles of SYRACUSE markings used between them, because in my experience it isn't uncommon at all for the logos on commercial china to change over sometimes extended production runs of the ware. Pics 3 & 4 show the two different stamps. (but not the SHENANGO logo)

Pic 2 shows what I'll call the final 'surprise', if in fact there's any truth to it -- *somebody* else had obviously had at least the grill plate in some other kind of sale before it got donated, and had left their little sticker on it reading: "Rock Island or Frisco "Cardinal" $22.00"

I don't know whether to take that as "free research", or just somebody's "believed recognition" of what is otherwise a completely plain and simple decoration pattern -- there obviously aren't any marks or logos on the china itself to link it to either railway. (but wouldn't it be fun if it *was* true?! <lol>)