[Archive]

Posted By: barrysloate

We've debated rookies ad infinitum on this board but if you were a kid growing up in 1949 you would have owned the Leaf Paige (assuming you could find one) months before you even knew that a Bowman card of Paige was going to exist. Even further criteria than which card came out first is necessary because Bond Bread issued a beautiful black and white set with some great photography of Jackie in 1947, but we seem to agree that this is not his rookie card because it was regionally distributed in Brooklyn only. So it is not so simple as to say both are his rookie card. We have to follow certain agreed standards. Then we have a situation like that of Kid Nichols, who appears in the significant OJ set in the late 1880's yet his mid-1890 Mayo is considered his rookie and the OJ his prookie. Again, a different standard of proof.