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

REMEMBER ME?
The Card: Keith Comstock 1989 ProCards Las Vegas Stars (CGC 10)
The Buzz On This: This classic prank photo appears on just a standard baseball card -- it's not an error/variation and it's not one that was pulled from production at any point because of its joke photo. It's one that's been out there all these years, isn't super rare and it has had its moments of fame when reporters found it again and again over the years, telling its story and helping pump up interest to where it's definitely a cult classic. I've graded this one more than a few times with good results -- I own top marks in slabs from PSA (a 10), BGS (two 9.5s) and CGC now. This was a recently graded copy of mine that I had planned to use in my monthly Making The Grade series here, but I realized just today that my lineup for MiLB stuff for this series this month was depleted ... so here we are. Only three PSA 10s exist, six BGS 9.5s and three CGC 10s ... none have checked in higher via any company with a decent volume graded between all of them.

Keep reading for more examples of some weird or fun baseball cards (and other stuff) you can find in all baseball these days -- not just in MiLB.

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Like many collectors, Buzz is a fan of grading and knows that there are many reasons that collectors choose to slab cards. Sometimes it's to enhance the appeal and protect them when selling. Other times it's to protect an investment for the long-term or to protect for sentimental reasons. Or, it might be just for fun or curiosity about a potential grade.

Here's this month's grading diary here on The Buzz ...

A COLLEGE CLASSIC
The Card: The Four Horsemen 1955 Topps All-American #68 SP -- Rookie Card
The Reason Bought: College football is back for another season, so I'll lead things off with a vintage classic. This card featuring Notre Dame quarterback Harry Stuhldreher, halfbacks Jim Crowley and Don Miller as well as fullback Elmer Layden is one that's been on my want list -- albeit very casually -- for a long time. I recently found one at a price that wasn't uncomfortable so here we are. I don't need a high-grade copy of this one -- just one that looks pretty good so I can say I have it. Besides their place in college football history, The Four Horsemen have a place in sportswriting history, too, as Grantland Rice gave them this name early on in what was a perfect 1924 season that ended with a national title. His New York Herald Tribune story started like this: "Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as Famine, Pestilence, Destruction and Death. These are only aliases. Their real names are: Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend cyclone before which another fighting Army team was swept over the precipice at the Polo Grounds this afternoon as 55,000 spectators peered down upon the bewildering panorama spread out upon the green plain below." It's one of those pieces that's often cited when talking college football or sportswriting history and it's often emulated and it later sparked a marketing scenario -- the players would go on to pose on horses in uniform. In a lot of ways, that marketing is still replicated every Heisman season and beyond. This set is a landmark release, especially for college collectors, and this is one of a few big cards.
The Grade: BVG 2.5

Reality Check: Mine checks in low, but it's not the lowest -- there are 18 copies worse than mine and 14 others with this grade. It's very interesting to compare that total and then consider how few cards there are above a seven here.

Keep reading for more of this month's pick-ups and new slabs for Buzz.

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Like many collectors, Buzz is a fan of grading and knows that there are many reasons that collectors choose to slab cards. Sometimes it's to enhance the appeal and protect them when selling. Other times it's to protect an investment for the long-term or to protect for sentimental reasons. Or, it might be just for fun or curiosity about a potential grade.

Here's this month's grading diary here on The Buzz ...

The Card: Dak Prescott 2016 Donruss #362 Rookie Card
The Reason Bought: It takes a pretty good deal for one of my buys to lead off here instead of one of my newly submitted grades, but this one was just that. This is one of those cards that is relatively available if you want to chase one down and slab it for some fun or profit. My cost? About $22, which might seem high generally speaking but isn't for its grade -- this was about half the price of the other cards in the same grade where I was looking at the time. They are even higher now.
The Grade: BGS 10

Reality Check: This one is just a half-grade away from a perfect BGS Black slab and the percentage of cards to get this mark is pretty low vs. the overall total. That's what surprised me here more and prompted the pick-up. It's a relatively heavily graded card, too, which you'd think would have resulted in more 10s. (Paper stock can be more pesky than Optic stuff when it comes to grading, though.)

Keep reading for more of this month's big selection of pick-ups and new slabs for Buzz.

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Do you like Buzz Breaks? Today's your day then as we launch 8 in 8 -- a series of a eight breaks of wax boxes and wax packs in as many hours today. We'll post one every hour ... this is Hour 5.

The pack: 1989 ProCards Las Vegas Stars team set
The cost: $3 (click here for baseball boxes)

What's inside this one? Why is it here? Well, keep reading ...

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What happens when the story of how one of the weirdest baseball cards ever made gets mainstream media attention?

This -- a $250 sale for a raw card -- and it's not even close to alone.

The story of how Keith Comstock's memorable 1989 ProCards Las Vegas Stars card happened was told in a Wednesday ESPN.com piece titled "'You're the guy with the ball to the crotch': The inside story behind the funniest baseball card ever made."

And it's been chaos ever since.

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Like many collectors, Buzz is a fan of grading and knows that there are many reasons that collectors choose to slab cards. Sometimes it's to enhance the appeal and protect them when selling. Other times it's to protect an investment for the long-term or to protect for sentimental reasons. Or, it might be just for fun or curiosity about a potential grade.

Here's this month's grading diary here on The Buzz ...

The Card: Vladimir Guerrero Jr. 2019 Topps Living Set #179 RC
The Reason Graded: While I own a few Topps Living Set cards the arrival of this second-generation MLB star in this weekly release sparked my first purchase from this popular brand that's clearly popular with flippers. I ponied up for 10 copies of the card --solely with potential grading in mind -- but didn't receive a single perfectly centered card in my batch, which was a bummer. After some grumbling, I picked out this one from the batch and sent it in.
The Grade: BGS 9.5

Reality Check: It graded as well as I thought it could -- maybe better -- so I wasn't unhappy with the grade and it appears that I'm perhaps on the luckier side with just two 10s out there better than it via BGS ... for now. This is a card that will likely be graded more and more often so those won't last but but it appears that this one is arriving between 8.5 and 9.5 more often than not. I have a second one I'll submit to PSA at some point with my sights set on a 10 there. We'll see sometime later this year.

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