Rookie Card Classification Question

JLange · #1 01-10-2015, 09:01 AM

I've wrestled with the rookie card defns as well, and have settled on the "First XYZ Card" rather than "Rookie Card." "XYC" can mean anything, such as the first Topps card, or minor league card, or first appearance in your favorite team's uniform, etc. This has been quite liberating for me, as now it is less confusing and can often be answered quite clearly. As primarily a Cleveland Indians collector, it has been quite useful for me to identify the First Cleveland Card of players rather than get into a debate about their rookie cards. As an example, Joe Charboneau's First Cleveland Card is unequivocally from the 1980 Cleveland Indians Team Issue Photocards set. If I limited myself to pondering what his rookie card is, there would be endless debate about which contender from the 1981 Topps, Fleer, Donruss, OPC, Kellogg's, Drake's, Squirt, or All-Star Program sets of that year is perhaps more legitimate. I get to avoid all the nonsense using "just the facts," and answer the question we are all trying to answer anyways.

One challenge I have encountered, though, is that many cards are truly hard to date, including JD McCarthy PCs, certain Team Issue PCs, Exhibit Cards, etc. As more hobby info becomes available, though, more and more of these sets and specific cards from these sets will be dated as well.

Exhibitman · #2 01-10-2015, 10:08 AM

The most desirable cards of post-war players are usually scarce regional or minor league issues that predate the nationally issued mainstream sets. You can define it however you want but if you ignore large classes of cards that predate the 'rookie' the whole point of having the earliest card of the player gets lost. I am always going to opt for the Cal Ripken or Rickey Henderson minor league cards over their later 'rookie' cards.

And what to do about Japanese and other foreign players who are now excelling in MLB and are potential HOFers? Do we ignore a decade of Ichiro cards from Japan and annoint his first Mariners card as the rookie? Seems kinda silly.

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