Posted By:
barrysloateJay- as you surely know in an earlier era it was easy to determine what a card was: Old Judges, Allen & Ginters, T206, Goudey, Topps, Bowman, to name a few , have always been baseball cards and have never been disputed.
Back then Peck & Snyders were trade cards, Boston Garters would have been considered advertising cards, and almost everything oversized would be termed something else.
But now almost everything is considered a baseball card, and subsequently slabbed, because it is worth so much more money. It's not any more complicated than that.
If 20 years ago you debated whether your Wagner premium was a baseball card, it would have been laughable. Today, it falls into that gray area.
But the market can also be a determinant. A Wagner rookie from the turn-of-the-century could easily be worth well into five figures. If you auctioned your piece off, it would probably realize a fraction of that. Perhaps that would give you a fair indication of whether or not the market accepted it as a baseball card or as a premium.