PSA’s registry and their opine is irrelevant to me. The 1947 Bond Breads are baseball cards that have been proven to be distributed in over 13 metropolitan cities around the country and pre-date 1948/49 Leaf and 1949 Bowman by a year and a half. That said, I’ll stick with common sense when it comes to which card is his rookie card (although I own a Leaf and Bowman just for good measure)

From my own rather cynical dictionary.

Rookie card - Archaic term used to describe a players "first card" with the condition that it be available in enough quantity that most dealers can readily get one for their inventory and thus exploit the rubes who only know what the guide tells them.

Honesty and consistency were both always and never in the hobby. I do think the number of obvious alterations on expensive cards has been reduced. The not so obvious ones have probably been given a boost.
There were always dishonest people in the hobby, just as there were and are some really great ones.

PSA was fairly early although not first, and they've had a decent registry as far back as I can recall. They were probably first with that.
And that registry competition drives prices, which in turn creates higher prices for everyone. That's both good and bad.
Those higher prices are tied to the registry, and even if SGC had a good one, they'd be behind because the "competitors" all began competing in the PSA registry.

Unless someone with insanely deep pockets was willing to spend like the AL did it's first few years, AND had a better product, that's a nearly unbreakable position. (Except it's sort of been tried, and the XFL and WLAF, and USFL... none did well at all. )

SGC has its share of messed up stuff, and with the recent move and redesign of the website and a couple other changes they didn't do themselves any favors. (And that's coming from someone who has only sent cards to them)