[wdmullins]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Why? Why for example isn't Michael Jackson's first card as significant as Mike Trout's, relatively speaking?

For several reasons -

1. Athletes have well-defined rookie seasons, and in general, the people pictured on non-sports cards do not. (When was Neil Armstrong's rookie year -- 1969, when he landed on the moon? 1966, when he flew his Gemini mission? In 1955, when he became a test pilot? 1949, when he joined the Navy?)

2. While sports cards have rookie cards defined separately from first cards (usually based on the differences between playing in major and minor leagues), the distinction is lost in non-sports cards.

3. In sports, a rookie card generally means a card issued in association with a player's rookie season, but not in non-sports (else John Milton's "rookie card" would be well over 300 years old). Michael Jackson first sang professionally in 1964 (as part of the Jackson 5), and as a solo in 1971. His first foreign card seems to have been in 1971 (as part of the J5), his first solo card was 1972 (also foreign), and his first US, solo card would have been from his 1984 Topps set. Which of these most corresponds to what is accepted as a sports rookie card? I'd say the 1984 Topps, but it's either 20 or 13 years too late to be a "rookie" card.

4. To people who've collected non-sports for a long time, the whole idea of a non-sports rookie card appears to be an attempt by sports card speculators to identify and hype non-sport cards as being more valuable than they otherwise would be, given that their intrinsic scarcity and value isn't any greater than any other card from the same set.

5. And often, people who identify a particular card as a non-sports celebrity's "rookie" card are simply ignorant and wrong when they do so (and I'm not accusing anyone in this thread, btw) -- I recently informed someone who was calling an Impel Terminator 2 card Arnold Schwarzenegger's rookie card that they were a year late -- he had appeared in the previous year on cards in Pacific's Totall Recall set.

Anyone who says a particular card is a celebrity's first card is making a statement of fact. Calling it a "rookie" card, though, is just putting a label on the card that it usually doesn't deserve, with the connotation that it has a value associated with it that the market may or may not bear out.