When Did RC Become Most Important?
 

A question was posed on Twitter asking "When did the hobby staple become the RC?"

I have been collecting since 1991 (5yo), and by then the RC was very important. I have read on this site about collectors hoarding early 80s wax for the Mattingly RC, so it was a staple by 1980. So what decade before 1980 did collectors turn to the RC as the penultimate card in a collection?

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The early 80’s is when it becomes the norm, as adults and money started to really increase in the hobby. Dealers started to pump rookies, needing some common cards to be money makers, and it caught on. Mattingly’s hype was in 1984 and really cemented it. Hobby has never looked back.

In about 1982 I traded a guy 9 1978 Eddie Murray's for a 1962 Mays. My mom wanted to call his parents to un-do the deal. I said, "Mom, we got those Eddie Murrays at Stop & Go for 35 cents a pack." In 1978 Eddie Murray rookie was not a thing. In 1982 it was a big deal that I had an Eddie Murray rookie, but I wanted a Mays, and to this day I would rather have a 62 Mays, than 9 1978 Murray's.

do you still have the 62 mays??

I don't know. I think it's in a 5000 count box with my original stuff. It was not in nice condition, so I know I never had it graded to sell. I know it would be a better story if I could say, "Yes, I have it here on my desk, here's a scan.", like an Orson Welles movie. I do have a 1960 Fleer Wagner on my desk that I bought at a show in the 80's.

Early 1980's. There was a monthly price guide that competed with Beckett (until Beckett sued them) that was really promoting rookie cards and hyping them by putting a "RC" after the players name. There was not really that much real time market information available back then, so the kind of made up the prices, but it really advanced the rookie card market by bringing in the investors. Pretty much any card with an "RC" would bring a premium. SCD was filled with ads of dealers selling the rookie card in lots of 25, 50, 100 for the investors.

Sometime in the 1980's would be my best guess.

Beckett had those price guides that had the RC and XRC designation on cards.

Yup, like others are saying, early 80's and being pushed by Beckett and those other early price guides. Also, a huge reason IMO that Goudey Ruth cards are so damn expensive. Those Beckett price guides listed '33 Goudeys as Ruth's rookie cards, despite 1933 being the 19th year of career. That is just insane given all the cards Ruth had issued in the years before.

News flash :
 

... Did you know , some say , I've heard , that you can classify a card as a rookie card , just by thinking about it ?

..

Is that when/how the 1933 Goudey Ruth cards became his rookie card? I truly do not understand that

I remember when Aaron was breaking the HR record that people started going crazy for his rookie card. I think the price was something like $5. I did not have $5 as I was only 12. :-(

Great post.I love rcs but I think the cards from a players biggest season should be more coveted or be sought after as well and normalized however in collections along with the rookie. I.E. 21 or 27’ Ruth, 56 Mantle, huge individual years or long term career accolades/milestone breaking years. Just my humble opinion.

This was the first RC to take off in 1974 and it was 25.00 after he broke the record. The 1977 Fidrych was the first hot rookie in the new set followed by the 1979 Horner and 1980 Henderson. The late 70s RCs started taking off. If you look at the first Beckett annual, the RC was already the player's card to have.

During what I believe to be the exact same year I remember a neighborhood friend receiving a literal bushel basket of the most trashed cards from his uncle. I remember buying a small handful for around 3-5 bucks of mostly Kellogg's 3d cards and some rando late 60's & early 70's beaters. His mom called to undo that sale the same day because she was sure they were worth millions. Looking back at the cards, i probably was overpaying, lol.

Now the trade I made in 85' or so, which was the GI Joe Snake Eyes Silent Marvel Issue (A BIG deal at the time), straight up for a 1954-55 Topps #8 Gordie Howe and more really turned out to be lopsided in my favor long term. His mom should have called. :eek:

As to the OP's question: I have been in this fairly non-stop since 79 and can never remember a time that the RC was not the most valuable card for a player (generally). I guess it makes sense that catalog designations helped with focus. However, It is funny that some of the most talked about cards including the 52' Mantle are not a rc.

Not to forget Joe Charboneau.... as that the first big rookie speculation bust?

My assumption is that it picked up in the 80s at some point. All I remember about caring about RCs when I first started collecting in the '85/'86 timeframe is the 1983 Topps Wade Boggs RC as he was my favorite player at the time. Anytime I'd go to a show or card shop and see one, it was like I was looking at my holy grail.

The bold part should have let all us collectors back them know there was so many around they would never be worth big money. I know back in the late 80s- early 90s bigger dealers could buy huge lots of specific players directly from the manufacturers. I don't remember the year anymore but I seen a large table covered in stacks of Don Mattingly cards fresh of the press that all went to one buyer. I was told this was very common for star players at the time. It also explains why sometimes when you opened a box of cards you got little or no star players in it.

Yeah, there's a predisposition in a lot of collecting hobbies that earlier is better, and thus it follows that earliest is best. Mix in some knowledge like availability is usually less as one works back in time, then start tracking the values, and that's a recipe for prices accelerating upward, as happened in the 70s and 80s.

I agree! 1961 Mantle and Maris are top notch in my opinion.

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I would say the introduction of Fleer and Donruss to the baseball card market in 1981 really started to escalate the RC phenomenon.

They also brought in the advent of the sought after "Error" card, though most of those have mostly been forgotten about or marginalized, except by the most hardcore variation collectors today (many of which reside on this very site. :D).

It was a big deal that Fleer did NOT have a Tim Raines card, and that Donruss did NOT have a Fernando Valenzuela card.

Topps had them both on triple player cards, and then again by themselves in the Traded set...though at the time, the traded cards were in no way, shape or form, considered Rookie cards at the time.

I think the Joe Charboneau talk gets exaggerated a bit. Maybe his card got up to a buck briefly, but he was pretty much seen as a late bloomer, serious injury case, very early on. It was all about Raines and Valenzuela by the middle of 1981.

Then Ripken and a bunch of other prospects showed up in 1982 (Steve Sax, Mike Marshall, Kent Hrbek, Johnny Ray, etc. etc...), and it really started blowing up then, and collectors started to really go back in their collections and start pulling the Rookies of almost any promising player they could find.

I remember I had a particular fascination with Damaso Garcia of the Blue Jays, for a time. Thought I discovered an up and coming player that everybody else overlooked. :D:D

Scott has it the closest, but my certain recollection is that the "Rookie Card" was uniquely the brain child of Mark Lewis, who with his brother-in-law operated a baseball card store on Highway 112 in Medford, NY. They published a price guide and introduced the notion that RC cards (as they defined them, of course) deserved a special premium, and their guide reflected this. Unfortunately, much of their price guide was an exact copy of Beckett's price guide, player by player, year by year. Beckett sued and won, and the Lewis Guide ceased publication. But the concept had been firmly planted that a Rookie Card was something special.

As an aside I will say that Mark ran a very good operation for collectors of then current material. Beginning in 1974 my two boys and I formed complete Topp's sets (x 2) by buying wax boxes and sorting until we were close and then traded with neighborhood boys with equal interest. Anyone who did this in the "old days" will remember that this scheme generaed hundreds and hundreds of duplicates that at the time had no value. Thus, Mark provided a valuable service. In the Spring every year he would buy cases of cards, hire a group of young kids, and they would sort into complete sets. I think he charged about 12 dollars for a set. He also bought anything that walked in the door and frequently had space fillers for those of us who collected sets. A wonderful, collector friendly store.

As many collectors have mentioned in this thread, about this time Fleer and Donruss entered the field and collecting was never the same again.

I never heard of dealers buying stacks of stars directly from the manufacturers. They did however bust open tons of Vending to sell big lots to player collectors and other dealers.

I had stacks and stacks of 1987 Topps Mike Greenwell Rookies I picked up early on from SCD dealers, for about a quarter a pop, just before his breakout season in 1988.

I lived in Red Sox country, so I was able to flip them regularly for a buck or two at shows before injuries and mediocrity caught up to him.

Also distinctly remember the 87 Donruss and Fleer Greenwells selling for double and triple the Topps versions, but being much harder to get in the quantity you could get the Topps cards in.

I think that's why I consider the 1987 Topps issue, to be the first real, honest to goodness junk wax release. They made a lot of cards in 1986....but I think 1987, with those wood grained borders was on a completely other level.

I don't know if it was the same one, but I remember a widely distributed price guide that would mysteriously show up at shows in the Northeast, and dealers would scour it for arrows pointing ^ like so, to indicate a cards price was trending up...because collectors/investors would show up at shows and then clear your tables of all the ^ cards you had.

It became a sort of a game, to stay ahead of the price guide, or price a little bit above what the guide said, to predict for the next month. Do you sell all your stock, or do you wait for the price to rocket up again? :confused:

Yes, Mark Lewis, that was it. I think it was called CPU (card prices update?). It was actually my favorite price guide. If I remember correctly, Herman Kauffman sued him for Beckett because he used Beckett's checklist.

At a store where I was the faux owner (his money, my knowledge), I constantly got harassed for the 83 Boggs card. In our cases at the time we had 1953- 1961 Topps in large quantities, including stars and over 100 nicely cut Post Cereal Baseball I'd recommend purchasing those cards as they were truly collectible; it wasn't a sales pitch, either, I honestly felt that way (and still do). The Boggs/early 80s rookie card collectors remained unconvinced and took their business elsewhere.

In 1987 I traded a 73 Schmidt rookie for a complete 1959 Topps Baseball set in very good to excellent condition for the store. At the time they were almost equal in value.

Phil aka Tere1071

Complete 1953 Bowman Color, 1971, 1972, 1974, and 1975 Topps Baseball sets which are constantly "under revision."

1970 Topps Baseball (missing 143 cards, mostly after #450) and a 1973 Topps Baseball near set, missing 30 cards.

Has Q issued his (her, it's?) list of RCs?

A lot of people call the 1952 T Mantle a RC, simply because they wish it to be so.

Enjoying this thread and learning a bit beyond what I was exposed to.

I'm in my mid-40s, so my first calling to the heat of the RC side of the hobby besides known stars and hot emerging talent was the 83 Fleer Ron Kittle (and 83 Topps Traded). It was the first time I remember a dealer wanting to immediately buy a pull out of a current product.

My first rookie card memories were of Ron Kittle and Darryl Strawberry.

I can say with confidence that rookie cards were being hyped as early as the mid-1970s. Much of the buzz at the time centered around the '54 Aaron, because he had recently passed Babe Ruth on the home run list. I recall being at a show during that era and listening to a dealer explain to me that his 1963 Rose was a "rookie card," and hence, deserved a higher price. I was only about 14 or 15 years old at the time, but I laughed the logic — and still do.

I'm not sure when The Sport Americana price guides first began to be published (late 70s to early 80s?), but I know they predated the Beckett guides, and James Beckett was a contributor, before branching out on his own.

I don't believe these guides indicated which cards were "RC" or rookies. But I do remember dealers using them in the 1980's and that Dr. J's 1972 Topps #195 (his rookie) was listed at .50 cents! I remember the dealer doubled the price to $1 and I was offended as a kid!

FYI, the Beckett guides list EVERY card in the 1933 Goudey set as a rookie card, so Babe just gets swept up in the madness. See photo below. It is pretty silly, they seem to have arbitrarily decided that the set would mark the beginning of RC eligibility. This 2010 Beckett guide also includes T205, T206, and CJ '14 & '15 set lists. None of the those sets have a single 'RC' in them. For example, Eddie Collins appears in all of these sets and has a card listed in the guide under each. Yet his '33 Goudey card is listed as his RC, years after he retired. The RC designation has no basis in reality for pre-war and should be ignored.


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Speaker and Lajoie are not RCs, but Collins shouldn't be either. I agree that RC should be ignored for early cards, but I would apply it to 1933 guys at the beginning of their career such as Arky Vaughan and cards after that such as 1934 G Greenberg or , 1939 PB Williams.

One could draw so many lines here that it is true because people buy into different definitions/exclusions for their own collections.

Even though card sizes were not standardized, some people don't count post cards/exhibit/oversized cards as "real" cards or RCs.

Some people won't count regional-only issues.

Some people won't count small checklist issues regardless of distribution area because of the lack of representation of teams on whole.

Some people won't count cards that come from "WG" game sets...or mail-in redemption sets...etc.

Then we have the ambiguity of the actual years of some issues because it's believed to be a multi-year issue. A card may have been distributed in 1910-1911 even though it's considered part of a 1909 set.

There's gotta be even more than this. I consider most all of it valid given the lack of a cohesive hobby opinion and I don't really care if this opinion solidifies into a consensus.

Sure, some of them are bound to actually be correct, in fact quite a few I'm sure, but my point was only that everyone who cares about such things should independently verify 'Rookie Card' status on their own and not rely on Beckett. This is, of course, news to almost no one here at net54, but I just wanted to let those who were wondering why these Ruth cards were falsely considered rookie cards by some how untrustworthy the source of that information is, not only for Ruth but for the entire set.

It was, but considering what you could get for $1 in 1981 and what even some "bigger" cards went for that was a pretty crazy price for a card straight out of a pack.

Not much before the early 1980's. Hobby publications from the 70's have a lot of stuff about error cards, which for a time were all the rage. But like in 1978, a Nolan Ryan rookie or something was not worth more than the Mantle or the Mays from the same set. Ryan then was not the legend he is now, but he was a superstar pitcher in the prime of his career with 4 no-hitters and a single season K record under his belt.

I started buying packs at age 9 in 1986, and by then of course rookies were all the rage. The obtainable one for my friends and I was the '84 Topps Don Mattingly. The most famous vintage rookie card then was probably the '63 Pete Rose, or the '52 Mantle - yes, people were referring to it as a RC even then - though we know the "First Topps" card designation is more accurate.

I too would agree that cards from an MVP or best season, or even a last season card to include the few that capture all career stats - should have some type of premium placed on them. As a kid who did not have the luxury of owning many vintage rookie cards, I would shoot for when the player was in his prime, or often just throw that out the window in favor of an "older is better" mantra. To my child's eye, a '51 Bowman Duke Snider was going to be more valuable than his '56 Topps - simply because it was older. Does that make any sense? It seemed to a lot more back then as compared to now.

Unlike with the 1952 Topps Mantle, this has never actually been a thing. Nobody ever considered that to be Ruth's RC. There were just some random ignorant people who have said it over the years and collectors find it so funny that they repeat it in jest. But nobody who has spent more than a week in this hobby actually considers it his RC. Whereas with the 52 Mantle, there are some who like to think of it as his RC primarily because it's his first Topps issue (yes, stupid), and is "close enough" to his rookie season.

Beckett claimed, in writing, that the Goudey was a rookie for years. It’s not a jest.

Agreed. It was begrudgingly granted that if a player did not have a card issued in his true rookie year, that one from the next year or sometime in the general timeframe was "the" rookie card. This is also likely at least initially how some people mistook the '52 Topps #311 for being something it was not. I'm not sure when some people started thinking that any mainstream "first" issue could be considered a RC, even if were years or decades after that player's first appearance in the majors. The '33 Goudey Ruths are clearly not considered rookie cards by anyone who collected rookies and understand how they were defined in the early to mid-1980's. Today - if people don't want to consider some of the rarer regional issues true rookie cards in cases like that - I'd rather just say the player doesn't have a rookie card.

The various forms of the Beckett organization - over their considerable history in the hobby at this point, has done more than a few questionable things here and there. :)

To put it mildly ;). But a jest is very different from a stupid proclamation. Beckett didn’t misprint one catalogue or have an April fools day jest. They kept it there for years, it was serious.

Just being honest, I don't remember that. Not saying it wasn't there. I'm guessing this was in the yearly guides later in the 90's and not in BBCM - where indeed, they did not list values for prewar cards. I would agree it's a stupid proclamation.

I have a 2010 Beckett price guide (see photo above) in which the 4 Ruths and almost every other card in the '33 Goudey set are designated as RC, so it has been at least that recently that the stupid proclamation has been propagated.

It was CPU. It was all the rage around 1981-82 when I got out of the hobby as a teen and when I went back into my LCS several years later and asked for one, the owner chuckled and asked where I'd been, then handed me a Beckett magazine.

The RC thing really started to matter in the early 1980s due to the publications pushing it. Before that, RCs were usually multi-player cards and were considered less desirable for that reason. By the mid-1980s the RC thing was in full bloom, and that run of Ripken, Gwynn, Boggs, Sandberg, Mattingly and several others who faded away (1984 Donruss Joe Carter anyone?) reached its apex in 1989 with Griffey and Upper Deck. Those things traded like penny stocks, in bricks. I knew weekend warriors who went all-in early and grossed thousands of dollars a day flipping them. Then we got junk wax...

The biggest RC of them all was Michael Jordan. I remember walking past an entire table of 1986 Fleer around 1987 or so and derisively describing it as crap.

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Ryan had a career record of 151-145 and was coming off a 10-13 season. Mantle and Mays were legends. How many sets today have a RC worth more than the regular Mantle in it?

At that time Ryan's RC was only 11 years old. It was in the 2nd series and easy to find. There were a few RCs worth more than the regular Mantle card in it's set, Seaver, Carew, Rose, Brooks Robinson. Rookies in high number series that were in shorter supply.

The Ryan RC was his most valuable card as were the rookie cards of most players. The exception was when a star player had a difficult to find high number card, such as Mantle's 1952 Topps high number card. Rookie cards were definitely a big thing by 1979.

Haven't read all the other comments but I would say 85 or 84. Possibly 83 but definitely no sooner. At least not in San Diego at the time.

RC
 

Rookie Cards may have been a thing in other areas of the country but I never heard of a premium for a rookie card or the importance of a rookie card until 1981.

Tim Raines and Fernando Valenzuela were sought after and I began hearing the importance of a rookie card.

I thought it was a short term fad and argued that a card of a player of worth alot more than other years was stupid but I lost that argument. I still think it is silly that a rookie card is worth multiples over other years without regard to series the card is in, etc but I don't make the rules.

Ruth has so many earlier and rarer cards than his Goudey cards it is so comical that Beckett would do such a thing.

Maybe it was done as a way of making them more valuable because they are more common and more transactions could be done with them.

As opposed to the better earlier cards where they weren't sold as often because they are more scarce.

Same thing with 1949 leaf Jackie Robinson being proclaimed as his rookie card, which it isn't, and given a huge premium as a result. He has earlier, rarer, and more attractive cards than the Leaf.

I remember digging through the cello packs at the Convenient Food Mart looking for George Brett rookies in 1975. The old couple that ran the mart would scream at me whenever I flipped through the cellos. Never stopped me though.