Quote:
Originally Posted by Rich Klein
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
|
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.