I tend to go with the earlier collectible items and a broader definition simply because the more restrictive the criteria, the more items are left out, often to the point of absurdity. A player might have ten or more years of MLB cards, yet that history will be ignored in favor of an artificial distinction. Just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. It is easy in an era of nationally issued cards to demand a mainstream issue across the country to be a RC, but that just wasn't the experience before WWII.
So many of our concepts in this regard are based on tradition or inertia or some guide that someone wrote.
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