When did the rookie card phenomena start

[deweyinthehall]

For perspective, I have a copy of Sport Americana #1 in front of me - it was published in 1979. Looking through it - in the 1975 set, the 4 player rookie cards all priced at .03, except Lynn (.15) and Rice (.20). In the 1973 set, all rookie high number cards, including Schmidt, were .12.

In general, because older cards had higher value, a player's "rookie" card, before we called them that, generally priced higher.

What people have said about the Fleer Update Gooden and the 1984 Donruss Mattingly is all true, but I also remember the Rosen "find" of 1952s in 1986 had a big impact. The term "rookie" card had already sort of been defined by then, and all of a sudden we had maybe 100 mint Mantle rookies on the market. I think it was a perfect storm of players (Gooden, Mattingly) location (New York market teams) and the Mantle thing (it didn't hurt that Rosen was a self-promoter and achieved something like celebrity status for a brief moment) that really drove things to the next level and started the whole notion of "I can pay for Jimmy's college with baseball cards!".

I seem to recall Fritsch selling Fleer Update sets at over $1000 per before things began to settle down - but hey, Larry Fritsch always marked things up a tad.