The Rookie Card

goodriddance189

there was some talk about rookie cards in this thread. i would like to elaborate a bit and get others' opinions about the term "rookie card"

from what i understand, the term "rookie" was basically price guide lingo invented by James Beckett. i forgot what the exact definition was, something to the effect of "a player's first nationally (in pack) distributed Major League card." and for the years from 1948 to the mid-to-late '90's, this definition worked. during these years, there was always at least one nationally distributed set produced.

but during the pre war era and in the last several years, the "rookie card" designation is a huge gray area. first the prewar- due to war time restrictions, the smaller market for cards, etc, mainstream sets were not consistently produced every year. only a handful of sets were actually found in packs (where the ball card was the selling point). many sets were distributed regionally, as premiums, packaged with other things (cigarettes, candy, etc), and so on. take for example the case of the Joe DiMaggio rookie, the 1938 Goudey. DiMaggio started playing ball in 1936, and has several cards that pre date his '38's- the 1935 PCL Zeenut, which is a minor league issue; Goudey Premiums; not to mention several 1936 cards produced by Canadian companies- WWG, OPC (actually a 1937 issue), and maybe a few others. but in hobby circles, the 1938 Goudeys are considered Joe's "true" rookies.

why? i can understand the Zeenut issue, since it is technically a minor league card. but what about the numerous T206 minor league cards that are considered rookies? why do those cards count, but not the '35 Zeenut? i know DiMaggio has at least one Goudey Premium card issued before '38. i can tolerate those cards not being thought of as rooks, since they were released in a mail-in promotion. but that leaves his Canadian issues, which were distributed in packs, and they're considered "first" or "early" cards.

since most on here don't collect modern, i won't go in to it in detail. but most hot rookies (Pujols, Ichiro, etc) from the past several years have hundreds of first year cards. when manufacturers started releasing serially numbered/jersey/autographed "rookies" in their regular sets, most people didn't think twice. even though they share the exact same characteristics of inserts- tough ratios, much more difficult to find than veterans' regular set cards, etc- the only difference is that they're numbered as part of the base set. you can't honestly tell me that a 2001 Albert Pujols jersey card (numbered in the base set) is any more of a "rookie card" than a 2001 Pujols jersey card (numbered as an insert). it isn't.

in closing, i have no idea what the hell my point is. i guess i'll pose a question- is the term "rookie card" dead? and if it isn't,has it taken much less meaning in the past several years?

what do you consider a rookie card? do you blindly listen to what Dr. Beckett tells you? if not, what are your thoughts?

jrdolan

I don't listen to anything Dr. Beckett says to anybody, mostly because his price guide is out of touch with reality on cards not graded by his own company. Also because he introduced BCCG, which is only a slightly more respectable version of PRO.

Rookies were very simple in the years when Topps was the only game in town. Your first Topps card was your rookie card, end of story. Back in the short period in the late '40s when Bowman and Leaf were both active, it was more confusing. Satch Paige's rookie (though he was roughly 103 years old at the time) is determined by SMR to be 1948 Leaf, which most other sources regard as 1949 Leaf because reportedly a large part of the two-year set came the second year. So his 1949 Bowman card, which may in fact have been issued FIRST, is not considered a rookie card. This burns my butt, and you can take a wild guess at which one I own. Even stranger is that Warren Spahn has a 1948 Bowman card, but SMR calls his rookie the 1948-49 Leaf. OK, so again I own the wrong one and I'm biased, but it's still an interesting question.

Let's grant that you need to have just one rookie card for the registries, so SMR has to choose when it could go either way. Well, what the heck is SMR going to do with Pujols, who has a couple dozen 2001 "rookie" cards, and other modern day players? With all the card companies, and all their different releases through the year, every rookie card these days has at least 10 variations. Will SMR settle on one or two as the "real" rookies? You'll hear some howling then.

What about, say, Clemens' 1984 Fleer Update. Is that his real and only rookie? All the 1985 cards of the Rocket say (R) as well in SMR, but I bet you only the 84 Fleer will count when you want to add Roger to your Postwar HOF Rookies set in about 2010. There are many cases like this. Bonds, McGwire, countless others.

Rookies are an interesting topic, with lots of opinions, but I long for simplicity. Maybe that's why I love the vintage stuff!

undertheradar

Even stranger is that Warren Spahn has a 1948 Bowman card, but SMR calls his rookie the 1948-49 Leaf

I believe that the SMR lists the 1948 Bowman Spahn as his rookie also.

Pittfan

While you are talking rookie cards. Can someone tell me which is considered Sammy Sosa's true rookie card. I thought it was the 90 leaf but when you look at the set registry the 90 Bowman is weighted higher.

jrdolan

On Sosa I think the different weights are due to relative difficulty (not that either card is especially difficult in high grade). The Bowman is just as much a rookie as the Leaf, but different scarcity and demand would mean different weights. Somebody who collects a lot of modern rookies may have more to say on it.

peterredshoes

As a modern collector whose modern collection spans the entirety of the post-Topps monopoly days, here's my take (pardon any repetition of previous statements; I want to somehow keep my thoughts organized):

The intent of the rookie card definition sure seems to be "first mass-market card of a player" or something close to that. For example, I don't think many folks consider minor league cards to be true rookie cards, which until very recently were more likely to be stadium giveaways at minor league stadiums than anything else. Moreover, "mass-market" in most people's minds is tied more closely to popularity than actual distribution, and minor league cards have, to my knowledge, never achieved more than a cult following no matter how widely distributed.

This definition is, is my and probably most people's minds, sufficient to eliminate inserts from consideration as rookie cards. Although inserts are techincally distributed simultaneously with their base set counterparts, the fact that there is a base set gives it a kind of priority or "firstness" over the inserts bundled with it. Not an argument entirely rooted in logic, but not insensible either.

So based on this, in a perfect world you'd have some magic database tracking the release date and distribution data for all card sets, set some threshold on the distribution data that defines "mass market" and then you could type your favorite player into the magic database and get the one card back that was distributed above that threshold with the earliest release date, and boom! That would be the rookie card.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view ), reality precludes such a database from ever existing. Although release dates for major manufacturer sets are now generally advertised online, that's a recent development, and getting access to that info for older sets might be problematic. More importantly, I don't think that the average collector pays attention to this. And why should they? Packs and sets are perpetually available if you look hard enough, and widely available for a fairly lengthy window after that release date. So simply tracking the year a set is quite sufficient for monitoring when it comes out, and better lines up with the seasonal nature of sports, anyway.

Point being, a better definition of rookie card is "first-year mass-market card of a player," where first-year refers to year when cards were released rather than first year of a player's career. This opens the door for multiple rookie cards as we see today. In the '80s and early '90s this was manageable, the total number of rookie cards was around 3-10. The major complication at this time was whether to count update sets or not--because a) they often didn't come in pack form, and this mattered to some people, including Beckett; b) they weren't quite as ubiquitous as the regular sets. This remains an open issue today, and I'm not going to pursue it any further because this post is way too long already.

As the number of mass-market sets has continued to increase, so too has the number of rookie cards that satisfy the above definition, to the point where many rookie cards aren't that appealing. Since I have data off the top of my head, I'll use Tim Duncan as an example. Beckett recognizes 18 rookie cards for Duncan, including such favorites as "SkyBox Z-Force" and "Metal Universe Championship". Although there's nothing objective about these sets that disqualifies them from rookie card status per se, I'm sure there's a healthy number of collectors that consider their rookie card collection of Duncan complete without them.

Nevertheless, I think that other than arbitrarily picking favorites, the modern player collector can't do much better than paring things down as I've outlined above. This is sufficient for me.

Peter G.

jrdolan

Interesting and thoughtful opinions, Peter. I think if I were a strictly modern collector, I would be going nuts over all the sets and subsets that are issued. Not to mention the prices that are charged per pack to pay for the autos and game-used inserts, which seem like they are becoming so much a standard that they may someday become the only "value" cards and the regular cards (even superstars) are just filler.

One very popular collecting theme is rookie cards of HOFers and future HOFers. Up until the past 20 years or so this was an easy list to maintain. Then Donruss and Fleer broke the monopoly, Topps revived Bowman, Upper Deck joined the fray, then starting 10-12 years ago everyone and their brother was producing a limited-edition, foil-coated, laser-etched, hologramed cards. Then they added refractor and auto. versions within the same sets to make it even more interesting and wring more dollars out of those who must have every Bonds or Pujols card.

The result is that a spanking new player can have more "rookie" cards than an entire career's worth of cards for an 18-year Hall of Famer who retired in the 1970s. How this will be handled in the registries beats the heck out of me. I just know that trying to pick one rookie card for future HOFers like Bonds, Griffey and Randy Johnson makes my head spin. And that's just the 1980s. Today's array of choices makes that look easy.