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. 

REMEMBERING HERITAGE ...
The Cards: Max Fried 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2017 Topps Heritage Minor League cards
The Buzz On This: Before he was among the stacked rotation of the Atlanta Braves and got himself a World Series ring, Fried was a member of the Fort Wayne TinCaps and the Mississippi Braves and he appeared on cards in the in-pack MiLB sets released under the Topps Heritage line. That meant retro designs here -- 1964, 1965, 1967 and the burlap-inspired 1968 look -- but with clean, modern printing and other touches that put it in the here and now while looking a lot like back then. Fried missed a year (I presume due to his injury/trade) and has some other inserts and parallels in these sets before his Heritage RC in 2018 and all that's come since. I keep talking about doing a run of some players' Heritage cards in slabs and I grabbed all of these since they're all affordable (despite being likely far rarer than anything Heritage MLB) and just might do it for both MiLB and MLB releases. Also: The Heritage MiLB brand apparently died in 2023 ... so pour one out for that one while we're at it.

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

Continue reading →