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. 

IF YOU KNOW, YOU KNOW ... AGAIN
The Cards: Vladimir Guerrero Jr. 2020 Choice Lansing Lugnuts 25th Anniversary set (nine)
The Buzz On This: The second MLB All-Star to be found in this one is Vladdy 2.0 (after Bichette 2.0 last month). This one is a cheap set I found on sale in the official MiLB Store ... so I did a bulk buy. Why? I want to slab some stuff in this one and the price was right for doing some cherry-picking. As I noted last time, if you don't dabble in the MiLB realm, there are some affordable ways to find top names in old unis without breaking the bank and this set shows off notables from this team's past -- a solid alumni set. Another type of cheap MiLB team set that can be loaded are the league "top prospects" sets and similar all-star team sets that can be sold by all teams in a league. My nine sets here were cheaper than pretty much all MLB hobby boxes so far this year.

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. 

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. 

PRE-ROOKIE CARDBOARD
The Card: Bo Bichette 2019 Choice International League Top Prospects #2
The Buzz On This One: With Bowman and other prospecting brands giving players cards as early as possible -- and stuff like USA Baseball and Perfect Game getting us cards before guys are even pros -- pre-rookie MiLB cards like this don't have as much oomph as they used to (though they may not have ever been super-popular) ... but I still like them. This one comes from an All-Star-style set that includes many more other notables like Bichette here and they're actually among the easier sets to find most often as most teams in the leagues sell the sets ... so there are likely more of these made than your typical sets. Nonetheless, I like grabbing anything for notables in MiLB team sets as they're easily tougher (or at least less plentiful) than anything Bowman. That's why I have this one batting lead-off ... the rest of the stuff you'll see this time is on the oddball side of things.

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

Continue reading →

Minor league cards can include some weird stuff ... stuff you wouldn't imagine to be found on a baseball card and here are five example of some oddities in this latest MiLB Madness series item. 

BARBEQUED BASEBALLS?
The Card: Nate Alleyne 2018 Grandstand San Jose Giants #34
The Buzz On This One: We'll just accept it as a given that a clubhouse manager needs a baseball card -- it happens in the minors -- but what might lead one to be grilling a baseball on a card? You know ... I have no idea but here it is. You know what's weirder? The fact that this guy has multiple baseball cards where he's toting water bottles and one where he's running a vacuum cleaner at home plate. The year before this one? Golfing with a baseball. Don't believe me? Click here.

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

Continue reading →