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.
).
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.