[TanksAndSpartans]

There was an episode of History channel's Pawn Stars and I'm pretty sure someone brought in a Baltimore News Ruth that turned out to be either a fake or a reprint. What was interesting is the expert that came in actually mentioned that the Goudey Ruth was the one most desired by collectors. I searched the internet for a clip, but unfortunately couldn't come up with one and I can't remember who the expert was.

One other thing I thought, non-company issued PSA registry sets, sometimes ones that don't even have the word "rookie" in it often include a very early mainstream card of the player as the one required. Red Grange comes to mind on the football side. The 33 Goudey SK is the Grange card in all the sets, but there are a number of earlier cards of Grange.

Finally, the prior poster made a good point - a lot of collectors do have a desire for that "origin card" - the card before whoever was a big star - often the player looks a lot younger than the image we have in our heads, the write up on the back doesn't recognize him as a big star, maybe the position isn't even one he wound up playing, etc. That's part of the historical research aspect of collecting to me.

For me, I have no problem calling the earliest card the rookie even if that makes it out of my reach financially. One thing that hasn't come up yet, as a card collector, I wouldn't feel bad about excluding a matchbook, or a pin, or whatever - I'd want it to be a card, but I'm sure we don't all agree on that either or even what a card is.