Posted By:
Andy BaranBrian,
I guess that you could make an argument that the cards of every player in the N167 set are rookie cards, since I don't believe that an earlier set exists. The HOFers in the set are Ewing, Keefe, Connor, O'Rourke, Welch, & Ward. I wanted the Ewing specifically for the following reasons:
1.) In my opinion, he was the most "important" of the HOFers in the set
2.) He was in the majors for the shortest period of time of any of the HOFers when the set was issued
3.) He is probably the most scarce of the HOFers in the set, based on the fact that his is the only HOFer card was not even discovered at the time of Lipet's Encyclopedia
Since my search has been so focussed on the Ewing card, I really don't have a good feel for the population of the other cards.