The poll is comparable to one asking people to vote on how many sides they think a triangle has. What's more interesting to me, than just asking people if they know the correct answer in this one particular case (Mantle), is to force people to operationalize their terms.
If a player has a card issued in 1909 but doesn't appear in a major league game until 1910, do you consider his 1909 card a rookie card?
If you say yes, then what you what you mean by rookie card is merely earliest card, and the M101-5 Ruth is not a rookie card by your definition, and neither is the 1989 Upper Deck Griffey Jr.
If you say no, then what you mean by rookie card is a card issued during the player's rookie year (and then we can further quibble about players who didn't exceed the rookie limits during their debut seasons or who didn't have any cards issued during their rookie seasons), and the Baltimore News Ruth is not a rookie card by your definition, and neither is the 1993 SP Jeter.
I'm fine with people using either definition, but there's not much benefit in using either of them if you aren't going to be consistent about it. That is, either you're in the pre-MLB-cards-count camp (i.e., the Baltimore News Ruth and the 1993 Jeter are rookie cards) OR you're in the nothing-prior-to-MLB-debut-counts camp (i.e., the M01-5 Ruth and the 1995 Topps Jeter are rookie cards).
In neither case does it makes any sense to call a 1952 Topps Mantle a rookie card.
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