What about Mark McGwire: 1985 Topps when he was on USA Baseball as a college athlete or 1987 on his first MLB cards?
The one thing this thread shows is that the whole 'rookie card' thing is a construct that doesn't make a whole lot of sense in less organized periods of collecting history. When you fold international cards into the mix, it really goes off the rails. Like, what do you do with the Negro League greats who had Cuban or Venezuelan cards that predated (by decades) any American cards? What about Ichiro? Anyone want to argue that a 2001 SP Authentic is a rookie instead of a 1993 BBM?
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