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Posted By: Paul

I don't see how "nationally distributed" can be in any rational definition of "rookie card." I'm not sure there's any convincing proof that any cards were nationally distributed before WWII. Old Judges were certainly widely distributed. But since they made a few PCL cards, I suspect that only the PCL cards made it as far as the west coast. (The population west of the Mississippi at that time was tiny, to say the least). T206s were widely distributed, but did they make it all the way to California? I've always assumed Goudeys were nationally distributed, but does anyone really know?

Regardless, there were certainly no more than very, very few nationally distributed sets before WWII. That leaves basically no one among the players that we all collect with rookie cards.

And what about Negro Leaguers with Cuban cards? Do we need to investigate whether those cards were distributed nationally in Cuba or only regionally?