Quote:
Originally Posted by Cozumeleno
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I'm fine with calling cards like the Sporting News card for Ruth a true rookie. But the bigger question, then, is if the non-mainstream cards for other players (like the earlier Musial cards) should be considered the true rookies of those players - even if there isn't a large gap in space.
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It's tough to figure out rookie cards for a lot of players, both modern and pre-war. For modern cards, you usually have a lot of sets who distribute the rookie card of the player in that year, and some of the parallels are limited to a specific # run like 25. So usually collectors try to choose the "best" card from the rookie year that's not limited to a small print run as the player's rookie card. (However, the cards that tend to be most valuable are the auto cards with the limited run for that rookie year.)
For pre-war, there are a lot of players like Cobb and Gehrig who have a whole bunch of cards issued around their rookie year, so it can be hard to figure out which one is the "best" rookie card. For Gehrig, I think most collectors choose the 1925 Exhibits as his rookie card, but some collectors don't like postcard size (or larger) cards as rookie cards. However, then the 1925-31 W590 was issued over a period of years, so collectors don't like that either.
I think most "advanced collectors" for pre-war rookie cards follow one of Phil's lists for HOF rookies or first cards issued or look at the list on Old Cardboard and pick the best one they like:
Link. (If you click on the player's name on the list, you can see some of the different options.)