My Ty Cobb RC?
 

Is the 1907 HM Taylor postcard considered to be Ty Cobb's RC? Here's one I picked up recently, has three holes punched in it, but that helped keep the price down a bit!

Great PC! Nice image of Cobb too. As to whether it is his rookie or not, if team postcards are included in that discussion, I think the 1906-7 W601 Sporting Life postcard technically predates that one. Both are arguably in the discussion though and it is all about what you want to have in your collection. Great addition!

Awesome postcard, but Cobb looks so friendless in that pic, as much of his career was.

like Brian said, the w601 Sporting Life postcard is actually 1906 and thus predates your card, still a cool pc though. Kevin Struss did some nice research on the subject, but the w601 postcards were most likely issued right after the 1906 World Series.

Thanks for the info guys. Jeff P., that's a sweet Novelty Cutlery PC you picked up of Bresnahan!

Word
 

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/calvindog/5342975261/" title="1906 Sporting Life Postcard W601 by calvindog65, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5047/5342975261_2c9bcac364_o.jpg" width="872" height="470" alt="1906 Sporting Life Postcard W601"></a>

I noticed the same thing -- he almost looks like an outcast, sitting there in the middle of his teammates. You can get the same feeling when looking at Cobb on the T200 Detroit card, perhaps even moreso.

That's a VERY cool postcard, Jeff, regardless of its "RC" status. :)

Really? postcards, 'team' postcards no less, can count as 'rookie' baseball cards? A lot happened while I wasn't collecting cards.

Jeff, It's neat that yours is dated exactly one week after the WS concluded and the Tigers had lost to the Cubs.
-Rhett

The dividing line between a team postcard being a rookie or not is directly proportional to owning one. :D

Looks like the ink used on both the postcard text as well as the Cobb identification on the top are identical. I find it a little odd that the sender having written the postcard in 1907 would have gone out of their way to identify just Cobb in the team photo.

Re: My Ty Cobb RC?
 

Phil,
Neither the ink nor the handwriting look similar to me. I suspect the Cobb ID was added much later.

Ed

I was simply stating the w601 pc came before the HM Taylor card. So if you count team postcards as rookies then it would be the w601 and not the HM Taylor, and if you don't then it would be neither. Everyone seems to have their own set of rules as to what counts as a rookie card (or even what counts as a card) which makes debating rookie cards pretty futile in my opinion.

The identifying copy for Cobb is ball point pen so it would have to have been written much later. I think the holes were made later too, I don't know if they had hole punches back then?

rookie card collecting is losing popularity almost as fast as type collecting. ;)

Not really. A baseball card is a baseball card. A postcard is a postcard. I have a nice baseball postcard collection, but I never thought of any of them as baseball cards.

what's the difference?

Thanks for clarifying, Jeff. Just from looking at the scan, the color, thickness, etc. of the ink appeared to be the same.

I have no skin in this game - just curious how people came to start considering postcards to be baseball cards. If you can't tell the difference, then I'm not going to waste a lot of time trying to explain it to you, but I can guarantee you that if the sender of that team postcard told the person in advance that he was mailing them a Ty Cobb baseball card, the recipient would have been surprised at the end result.

you're right, not cards. my bad.

Not sure how I feel about this one...definitely somewhere in the middle. I think about hand-cut/strip cards as somewhat different than traditional baseball cards too. And I think to me a determining factor in deciding if a PC is a card is whether the postcard is part of a series (i.e. Dietsche, HM Taylor, Sporting Life, Rose, etc.) as opposed to just a one-off. I mean to me the card below is a card and not a PC:

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/calvindog/4616027961/" title="1913 Sporting News M101-3 by calvindog65, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3351/4616027961_dfd7c8d285_o.jpg" width="500" height="924" alt="1913 Sporting News M101-3"></a>

Runscott would you consider exhibits not to be cards because a few series have post card backs? Then you have the 1931-32 that even state on the back its a card, and no way it could be considered a postcard with no room to mail because of the ad on the back. IMO in some case they can be both but they are cards along the same lines as Calvindog listed.

http://i112.photobucket.com/albums/n...ort50black.jpghttp://i112.photobucket.com/albums/n...ibitpcback.jpg

http://i112.photobucket.com/albums/n...uth40green.jpghttp://i112.photobucket.com/albums/n...th40greenb.jpg

In order to simplify things, maybe we should just call the item a Rookie, i.e.- Ty Cobb Rookie and leave off the "card" part of it. In that way, it could be a card, postcard, premium, pinback, etc., whatever his first Major League collectible would be. At least for Rookie identification purposes, that would eliminate the never ending argument about what constitutes a "card". Then we would only have to deal with whether a team item would count (my personal opinion is no).

You said "cards", not "baseball cards" (I was looking for that when I came back to check out this thread) :)

An 'exhibit card' is an 'exhibit card', just as a 'postcard' is a 'postcard', a 'supplement' is a 'supplement', etc. But of course, it's a 'baseball exhibit card', just as you have 'baseball postcards', 'baseball team postcards', etc. I wouldn't consider a postcard to be a 'baseball card', just because it is part of a series (not a 1-off). Where you should go with this is to argue that the caramel and tobacco series cards are 'advertising cards', not 'baseball cards'. Then you would have me backed into a corner! Same thing, I guess, with the example you gave above.

I think when we've had these discussions before, they generally never got resolved, and everyone ended up just saying that the 'rookie' designation can mean whatever it means to each person. When I saw my first t206, I thought, "that's just a tobacco advertising card - who cares if it has a baseball player on the front? Why would anyone collect them? There's no stats!!!" Then, of course, I fell in love with them.

I don't consider 'team' cards to be player cards - to me they could never be considered a 'rookie card'. Also, I wouldn't consider a pennant or pin with a player image to be a 'rookie card', but certainly it could be a 'rookie item'. I also don't consider strip cards, box cut-outs, or stand-ups to be cards (as long as we're baring our souls). I once bought a strip card, just to come face-to-face with the damned thing and pass final judgement - I scowled and sentenced him to ebay.

To be fair, if I collected 'rookie cards' and a super-cool postcard or pennant of a player I needed became available, and it was older than the card I sought, I would say "what the hell, I'm now collecting rookie things."

[QUOTE=calvindog;934366]

That M101-3 of Cobb is a real beauty. I never noticed before that he's holding his shirt together with a safety pin. Kind of like the Conlon photo of Ruth with gum on top of his cap.

the only difference
 

Yeah, the only difference is I can show you references to type card collecting from the 1930s to 1940s....been losing popularity ever since. As for rookie card collectors....I guess there are a few left...

I should add that I used to be rookie card collector myself and it was fun. I have nothing against any collector. Do what makes ya happy. I just wish no one else was a type card collector!!

Jeff, if you don't want to participate in the discussion, creating a straw man is kind of a weak sign-off. As you are well aware, I never said they weren't cards.

sorry, but it's all semantics and doesn't matter.


cool rectangular cardboard baseball collectible thingy Jeff!

Then what does this mean? :confused:

I completely agree on both. Hopefully the long-winded post I put up earlier showed that I'm very aware that my 'rookie thoughts' don't stand up to hard logic.

"Rookie Card"
 

We parse this subject every few months. There is no answer because there is no such thing, it's a hobby construct to begin with. Will always be a moving target and mean different things to different people.

Exactly.

Jeff P. - I'm glad to learn that type-card collecting is losing popularity. Iinasmuch as Leon already has examples of all the type cards, going forward, I assume it will be easy to add to my type collection! :)
Val

Earliest catalogued Ty Cobb item (W601 Premium).............