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Minor league baseball cards from the past can include some weird stuff ... stuff you wouldn't imagine to be found on a baseball card. Here are some some new oddities in this latest edition of MiLB Madness. 

HIS FIRST FIRST
The Card: Justin Turner 2006 Grandstand Billings Mustangs
The Buzz On This: This MLB veteran, All-Star and World Series winner has played for four teams in 15 years but it all started off with a different franchise as he was a seventh-round pick of the Cincinnati Reds in 2006 -- and other than the basic bio stuff that's about all this first card even says. I had this one bouncing around in my small stash of MiLB sets for some time as the Mustangs were about the only team I knew about as a kid in the real world -- in the reel world the Durham Bulls, of course, were big in the early 1990s after Bull Durham. I recently flipped back through some of my old sets and was surprised that I knew this name and it was him. Turner never actually played for the Reds in an MLB game and he's well-known for that big crazy beard but that's not here. His first Bowman Chrome card came two years later -- his only Reds card (I think) -- and his RCs are in 2010 releases when he was a Met. This one is an easy first ... and I'm not even sure he has much more MiLB cardboard. Turner is perhaps not as high-profile on cards as he was as a Dodger, but this card being a first makes it a lot more interesting to me than even his RCs. It's also so clean I might even slab it at some point, too.

Keep reading for more examples of some weird or fun baseball cards you can find in MiLB.

Continue reading →

Minor league baseball cards from the past can include some weird stuff ... stuff you wouldn't imagine to be found on a baseball card. Here are some some new oddities in this latest edition of MiLB Madness. 

GOING OFF THE RADAR ...
The Cards: Michael Harris 2021 Choice Rome Braves (five copies)
The Buzz On This One: This guy is likely to be on my collecting radar quite a bit this year after a near-cardless 2022 that saw him take home the National League Rookie of The Year honors with the Atlanta Braves. Before that, "Money Mike" had some prospect cards in packs and minor league cards count there, too, but his Rookie Cards were held to appear in the full 2023 lineup. With basic stuff like 2023 Topps figuring to the plentiful and prices all over the place right now, I opted to pick up a lot of these -- as team sets -- as he's in there and so are others (you'll see them in later months here) instead ... and I did it without breaking the bank. He has other MiLB cards -- but not a ton -- but this one looked good to me for the price. I'll probably grade some of these, too, as you can probably guess based on the cases they're in right here.

Keep reading for more examples of some weird or fun baseball cards you can (almost) only find in MiLB.

Continue reading →