18,000 rookie cards for one player
 

In 1995, I stopped collecting because it became a pain in the ass to collect every card of my favorite player.

Now, those days seem so simple.

This guy does a great job of quantifying the absurd increase in cards and variations over the last 30 years -- including Paul Skenes, who had 18,000 DIFFERENT CARDS last year.

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cymZrqsO5ns

In America, we seldom learn from our mistakes, and apparently, cards are no different

Get 'em all, man!

;)

I just want the cards of him and Livvy

Kyle Hendricks has a very rare ultra-modern RC count, one.

There's just a 2014 Topps Heritage. There's no border variations, autos variations, or other print variations...just the base card.

By my definition, Aaron Judge's only true RCs are in 2016 Topps Now, with three different ones. The cards were issued after he was on a major league roster and show him in major league action. And Topps Now, in subsequent years, carried the official RC logos. I don't know what these are if not late season rookie cards. I get that they are not "base" cards but a lot of cards that carry the RC logo are not "base" cards nowadays.

I thought Judge's RCs were all from 2013. Aren't the Bowman draft cards considered RCs in today's parlance? Don't get me wrong, I love Topps Now. Probably spent too much pizza money on those over the years and now have small stacks of random Ohtanis and various Call Ups.

Personally, for modern players that I like to collect for fun, I just try to find his first issued card, whether it is a minor league or overseas or something like a Bowman Draft.

The rookie logo doesn't determine what is a rookie card. They even put it on inserts these days. All it means is that it's a card issued during the year that the player's rookie cards were issued. Not that the card is necessarily a true rookie card.

That said, with regards to Topps Now, they are generally not considered true rookie cards because they are made to order, and not pack issued cards of a widely distributed product. And even though some Topps now cards have a rookie logo, Topps is very careful not to put the logo on players' cards who won't have true rookie cards that year. Players who are playing in the majors, but were called up after the cutoff date to be included in that year's sets, don't get the rookie logo on their Topps Now cards, they get a "Call Up" logo instead. Judge's 206 Topps Now cards would be similar to someone like Roman Anthony this year. He has been called up and is playing in the majors. He has Topps Now cards this year. But they don't have the rookie logo, they have the call up logo. Whereas someone like Roki Sasaki, who is included in Topps products this year, has the rookie logo on his Topps Now cards.

"The market" seems to strongly favor the RC shield/logo card as the true RC as far as 2006+ baseball cards.

Bowman 1st vs RC sales and popularity strongly backs this up.

One can view it as stupid or arbitrary, especially since early 2000s Bowman cards of guys who won't play in MLB for years are considered RCs...but aside from some 2005-2006 straddling cards (Verlander, most obviously) the market really gravitates toward the RC shield/logo cards as true RCs.

I would like to see what you are basing this on. A player's first bowman auto will invariably outsell his topps chrome rookie auto. This holds true for basically all variations. If you compare cards of similar print run, the first bowman will virtually always outsell the rookie card.

The autos def tend to favor Bowman 1st, and for more popular players the Bowman 1st can bring it big.

I probably should have drawn a line around the ultra-modern era at the very least.

I understand what you're saying. I guess my minority take is that with so many cards now issued other than in the traditional packs, that has lost its importance and if it's a card from a licensed and mainstream manufacturer that is not a prospect card, because the player is in the majors and depicted as such, it should count.

Yeah, it's such a mess now, I'm sort of in the camp that even prospect cards should count if they are fully licensed, just like back in the 80s and 90s. I don't care that the number on the back says it's an insert. To me, even inserts can be rookie cards. I was just explaining what supporters of the "true" rookie card say. Given the changes in the past 40 years, we are at a point where people just decide for themselves what is a rookie and collect what you like. The people who staunchly argue for a single definition that they claim hasn't changed are fooling themselves. I can think of at least 3 times since the 80s where what was a "true" rookie card changed.

It certainly has evolved over time. The XRC thing, meaning that at one point a 1985 Clemens and 1987 Bonds were considered rookies. The kiddie cards of the 90s issued when players were just out of high school and years before they played in the majors (the 1993 Jeters as just one example). The "official" designations starting in 2006 I believe it was. The prospect card/auto craze starting in the mid 2000s I think it was. I have pretty strong ideas as to each player what his RC is, but I'm not sure I could give a consistent or coherent defintion.

I'll keep my opinions on this subject to myself as I spent nearly two decades on the "front lines" about rookie cards back in my Beckett days.

BUT, the reason for these changes, and one that made sense to the MLBPA was in simplest terms, if you have a "hot" player in his rookie season then you can sell more cards and make more $$$ if a rookie card is issued, ahem, during the players rookie year.

This was really brought to the fore in 2001 when both Ichiro and Albert Pujols (with an assist at the time from Mark Prior) were rookies and did not have any mainstream "American" cards before that season and with the way they played they drove sales of almost all 2001 products. From there, the MLBPA was ready to make sure that change took place about no rookie cards until the player is in the majors.

Hockey, is the only sport similar to Baseball in that most players spend time in the minors before they make their NHL debut and they instituted the same rule about no RC's until the player make their debut a few years before MLB

Basketball and Football by their nature have about 98 percent of rookie cards are players who are rookies that season. There is always the exception of a player who might come up from the G League or just come out of a NFL "reserve" squad

Regards
Rich

Regards
Rich

Wasn't it 2006 that the new rules came into play? Rich are you sure the impetus was Pujols and Ichiro, that was 5 years prior?

Yes I'm sure about the impact. And yes it did take 5 years to get everything lined up. Contracts with the manufacturers had to be concluded because Topps would have had, in my opinion, a real good case against the MLBPA if they changed the rules while the contract was extant.

By 2006 Donruss/Leaf/Playoff was eliminated by MLBPA as a producer and Fleer went out of business in 2005 so yes it took a few years to get things to calm down.

And frankly, for the first few years the world was a lot easier for the world as the # of major sets went down from the 90s in 2004 to the 30s in 2006 with the RC change as well.

So yes Ichiro and Pujols was a realization but it takes time to make those changes. A note about 20 years later is to look at how Fanatics will take over the NBA and the NFL Licenses from Panini but those Panini contracts had to be allowed to finish before Fanatics made the official cards.

When I decided to try to collect all of the Kobe rookie cards, I didn't know what to go after since there were so many. So I just went to the PSA website and went after the ones on their list. It still omitted so many nice cards, but it was a place to start. I haven't looked at more modern player lists. Does PSA try to keep it to an achievable number for the new rookies? Is it like 25 cards or more like 100?

See above -- it's up to as many as 18,000. Is there a binder that holds 2,000 pages?

From a value hunting viewpoint the gazillion RC is an eye rolling money grab to add more "value" to a product that's ever-increasing to buy in, and in need of better odds for people to pull their hits.

Rather than capping production of a collectable, there's a lot more focus on making an increasing amount of variations.

Things like this have a tipping point, and as it is some stuff that's legit rare is lost in the shuffle.

From a collector point of view that just wants a cool card of a single player, the variety is nice.

I'm not sure the Seiya Suzuki card I chose for my collection (2022 Topps Japan Edition - Cherry Tree variation) would be available if not for this level of corporate money grab. I like the card because it's a 1987 Topps style front and the back has his full Japanese stats.

Very enlightening, thanks for sharing this background. Explains a lot. It also makes me feel better about my strategy of simply finding the player's first properly licensed card. It's a purer way of collecting "rookies", even if the MLBPA doesn't say they are rookies.

This Ichiro has to be a world record for a card most years before what most people would deem RCs.

That Takara is totally awesome. My favorite of his Japanese rookie cards, largely because it was the one most likely purchased by kids and played with as part of a game.

Hey Rich - what’s the “loophole” in the RC rules that allowed Ohtani’s Topps Heritage RC logo from being printed and released before he made his actual debut? Has anyone else had this distinction since the advent of the current rules?

It's been a while and I'm trying to remember the exact circumstances that there was a Heritage 1st series card which came out in a very short print before it should have been issued.

Here is my best memory "guesstimation"

If you go back to 2007 when Daisuke Matsuzaka was a Red Sox Rookie Topps knew he was going to make the team and had cards ready to go the minute he officially became part of the MLBPA.

So it's either one of two things, Topps did an Ohtani card with the purpose of being a redemption and not to be released until the season began. I don't remember if it came in packs or not. I'm sure you can check the Blowout Forums to see exactly when the card hit

Or, Topps just messed up and goofed up. This still happens years later. On literally the last day of 2021, Topps released their Bowman's Best product and there was a Rookie Card of Wander Franco (a big deal then) and four other people before they should have been included in 2022 products.

So it's not really a loophole but probably more just human error

Regards
Rich

Yea - I guess they could have had another Alex Gordon situation on their hands if he started 2018 in the minors. The ‘21 Bowman Best crew on Blowout have filled substantially since the Wander stuff came out, but the Witt collectors still debate whether or not that issue is the true RC under the current understanding of the rules (mistake or not). I think most believe it was Topps’ way of giving the finger to Fanatics before the sale/transfer became final

Or you could just collect Paul Skenes' 2019 Leaf Perfect Game National Showcase cards and be done with it. No binders needed.

In 1993, someone bought me the boxed team set as a gift when they went to Japan. I still have it.

Shohei's first Japanese cards significantly predate his "RCs" as well.

Ohtani had signed a major league contract, meaning he wasn't going to start the season in the minors. The agreement between Topps and the MLBPA that created the rookie logo designation sets forth that a player who is on a major league contract and has played in an official major league game may be included as a rookie card with the logo. It might seem odd, but in the agreement, the term "official major league game" is specifically defined to include spring training, regular season, and post season games. If memory serves, Ohtani's first rookie logo card was in Topps Opening Day, which would have come out after the start of spring training.

The MLB's RC logo system seems complicated. Will have to leave that to the unionists and lawyers. Here's another of Ohtani's earliest cards (the earliest, according to at least one authoritative source in Japan).