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Although collecting pre-war rookie cards, primarily BB HOF’ers, has gained somewhat in popularity over the past decade or so (as compared to what I perceived it to be back in the days of Hal Lewis, Andy Baran and few others), this segment of the vintage card market is still far from being a mainstream interest as is the case with post-war rookie card collecting, i.e. - Mays, Aaron, Clemente, etc. Why is this?

Well, for the past 40 years or so, a publication called Beckett Baseball Card Monthly puts out a magazine which notates the rookie card of practically every post-war Hall of Famer. Thus, we have an attainable “set” to collect which is clearly defined and there doesn’t appear to be any issue regarding what is and is not a rookie card. Even the third-party grading company registries agree on this and offer it as one of their most widely collected sets. So, why can’t the same be true for pre-war rookie cards?

The answer is that it can be done, maybe not all at once but, step by step, until the job is complete. Since the only way to get a consensus (and not have to deal with the never ending debate about what is a card, rookie card, etc.) is to have Beckett and the Standard Catalogue to recognize and document as such, the rookie cards for pre-war individuals. I tried to do this through Bob Lemke several years back but it never went anywhere.

The first thing that needs to be done is for clear parameters to be established, which must be done independently from any individual interests which could cause bias. This doesn’t really have to be that difficult, follow the current guidelines for post-war and also take into account, the current pre-war rookie cards that are universally recognized such as Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Ted Williams, etc. When I have a chance, I will post my parameters here in this thread.

Once we have the parameters and are able to communicate the importance as well as provide the content to SCBC and Beckett, we can easily get at least half of the pre-war HOF rookies notated in the guides, those being the easiest to agree upon. Then it’s a matter of maybe someone on this board who has the necessary influence to work with the editors to get this job done. Then, little by little, we can work on getting the more “controversial” choices into the guides. Eventually, all will be there. Then, finally, this can become a mainstream collecting interest just as T206’s, Old Judge’s, etc. are.