Milwaukee Bucks

The Milwaukee Bucks are inseparable from Giannis Antetokounmpo’s story. Milwaukee drafted him 15th overall in 2013 out of Greece, and he has never played for another franchise. He won back-to-back MVP awards in 2018-19 and 2019-20, took Defensive Player of the Year in 2019-20, and in 2021 led the Bucks to the NBA championship — closing it out with a 50-point Game 6 and winning Finals MVP. He wears #34.

Source: Wikipedia’s Giannis Antetokounmpo entry — born in Athens, Greece; “selected 15th overall by the Milwaukee Bucks” in 2013; “won consecutive NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP) awards in 2019 and 2020”; “he was named the NBA Defensive Player of the Year in 2020”; and “In 2021, he led the Bucks to their first NBA championship since 1971”, after which he “was subsequently named NBA Finals MVP by a unanimous vote.”

Because Giannis has only ever worn green and cream, every Giannis card is a Bucks card. There is no team-change split in his collection the way there is for most stars, so the useful way to organize a Bucks-era Giannis collection is not by uniform — it’s by era.

The Bucks era, mapped to cards

1. The rookie year — 2013-14. His only rookie-year season, and the one part of the collection that is fixed forever. Every 2013-14 Panini product carries a Giannis rookie, each with its own card number: Prizm #290 (the flagship), Panini base #194, NBA Hoops #275, Select #178, Prestige #175, and Crusade #122 (RC-flagged) with the Crusade insert #61 alongside it. The full breakdown of which sets exist and how to tell them apart is in the Giannis rookie card checklist, and each set has its own review under set guides. If you’re buying rather than cataloguing, start at the rookie cards hub.

2. The MVP run — 2018-19 and 2019-20. Two MVPs and a Defensive Player of the Year in the same stretch. Cards from these seasons are where the modern parallel rainbows get deep: the chrome-finish flagship products issue a base card plus a long ladder of colored and numbered parallels off the same card number. How that ladder is structured — and how to read a parallel out of a listing title — is covered in Giannis Prizm parallels.

3. The 2021 championship. Milwaukee’s first title since 1971, Finals MVP, and the 50-point Game 6. Championship-era cards are the sentimental core of most Bucks collections, and they are their own collecting lane — see championship-era Giannis cards.

4. The ongoing era. Giannis is still playing, so his card supply is still growing every season. Two lanes dominate: autographs — where the first thing to learn is how to spot a fake Giannis signature — and jersey, patch and memorabilia cards, including rookie patch autos. New Panini releases land on a predictable annual cycle; the release calendar tracks the windows.

Buying Bucks-era Giannis cards

Giannis is one of the most counterfeited modern players, so for anything with real value the practical advice is the same across all four eras: buy it in a slab. Graded Giannis cards covers what PSA, BGS, SGC and CGC each mean for a Giannis card, and the grading ROI calculator is there if you’re deciding whether to submit a raw copy yourself.

For price, use live listings rather than any published figure — the method is laid out in how to value a Giannis card. The complete index of everything covered on this site is the Giannis Antetokounmpo trading cards page, and the player hub is the season-by-season collection map.