True Pre-War Rookie Cards

[h2oya311]

My head is spinning, but I sorta see the logic with this...since I look for the earliest (generally playing years or baseball related) cards/photos of a player, I have a much easier time figuring out "rookie" (or should I say earliest?) issues for negro league players. With all this minor league/major league "pre-rookie" mumbo-jumbo, what do you do there?? Ignore these HOF negro league athletes completely?

Maybe it's just me, but I have a harder time calling a 1949 Bowman card of Satchel Paige a "rookie" when he was 44 years old and had been playing organized/professional baseball since the late 1920s. And how about Josh Gibson or his predecessors who never played a Major League Baseball game?? And don't tell me that Gibson's 1950-51 Toleteros is a rookie either. He had died in 1947, 3-4 years prior to issuance!