Yeah, XRC was used for rookie cards from traded sets. That was a bit of a compromise after they said rookie cards had to be from a "major nationally distributed set" Which was put in the defenition to exclude draft pick and highschool all star sets. Jeter was in a couple of those, and was probably one of the main drivers for the change. After all, the highschool all star set only had a print run of something like 5000, not nearly enough for all the dealers at the time to get in on the action.
And with McGwire they had a different problem, a card in a major set that wasn't actually a major league card. I think that's about the time the FTC- first Topps card designation came along.
The whole "rookie card" thing actually made sense up till roughly the late 1970's. after that it got sillier and sillier.
Steve B
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