The "Louisville Slugger" emblem on the mini bats began somewhere between 1977-1979. Anything H&B would have been earlier. As for the mini's you can also tell differences between the rolled or stamped signatures and the actual 'burned' signatures that were the early 1960's and earlier.
The first mini's H&B put out were in the late 1910's to 1920's. They were 14" long and have either H&B or J.F. Hillerich on the center brand. Those typically are the best ones. They'll be $40-$100 with some going a lot higher like Gehrig and Cobb. Ruth is the most prevalent and is in the $100 for a decent copy. I had a really nice lot of 9-10 Philadelphia Athletic 14" minis at one time. I still have a few of my mini's left but not many.
The 1930's/1940's saw the brown bats with '40' in the label and gold printing on them. In nice shape, they are some of the prettiest mini bats out there. There are probably more mini bats from that age than any other in my estimation.
If you look at the Famous Slugger Yearbooks that H&B put out from 1921 till 1978, in many of them from the 1930's on, they have listed 12-18 mini bats that they were producing during that year and you could order for 25 cents up to a few dollars toward the end. At one time, I attempted to catalog all of them from the Yearbooks but didn't get too far. I think H&B produced the general ones listed there but then I think they produced mini bats for the teams to sell in gift shops and I think they also produced them for the players themselves to give out. Just my opinion.
They are a great collectible but do take up some space. Will try to post a couple pictures of some here in a minute...........
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