[bcbgcbrcb]

To me, the parameters for what constitutes a rookie card are very clearly defined here. There is no debate that the 1903 Allegheny Frank Selee is his rookie card. Given that the entire set is believed to have only one copy of each card in existence, it is a monumental accomplishment for the one individual in the world that owns it. Since this set was a prototype and never reached the commercial distribution stage, it is extremely unlikely that another set will ever surface. The same can be said for the 1894 Alpha Photo Engraving Baltimore cards which include 4 Hall of Fame rookie cards: John McGraw, Joe Kelley, Hughie Jennings and Wee Willie Keeler (unconfirmed). Only one set is known to exist, always possible one or more could turn up but after 130 years, probably not. I don’t know if the same individual owns all of these cards or they are owned by multiple collectors. Again, kudos to the owner of each, nobody else will ever own one of these unless the owner decided to part with them. There are other similar scenarios such as the 1893 Just So Tobacco Cy Young and Jesse Burkett. I think there might be a second or possibly third copy of a player or two from that set. Again, an impossible task to find one of these. So we as HOF rookie card collectors can either accept the fact that we can never obtain every one and move on with collecting them anyway or we come up with the next best thing (although it might not be the true rookie card, it allows us to continue the chase).