What is a key card ? (Submit & show your votes per set!)

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Posted By: Jason L

Hello all.
A simple and kinda newbie question, but I have never really paid enough attention to make sure I knew the definition.

What is a key card? Is it simply an important card in any particular set?

Does a set's key cards include (by definition):
all the HOFers
all the important rookies
all the scarce ("tough") cards

Any and all coments welcome!!!
thanks

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Posted By: Anthony

The most desireable and coveted card in the set.
T206 would be probably be Wagner or Doyle, T205 Hobby No Stats, '14 CJ Matty, etc.

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Posted By: davidcycleback

key(s) = most important card(s) in the group

It can be a judgment call, but the keys usually include the best HOFers, key rookies and desirable rarities.

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Posted By: dennis

what was said in previous posts...usually the key cards in any given set are the ones with the highest value(period). top tier hall of famers.....for example in any 1960's topps baseball card set the key cards always include mantle,mays,aaron and clemente. often, a key card would be a rookie card of a hall of famer like the 67 topps set tom seaver or rod carew ,who would usually would never be considered key cards in other sets, but because these are rookie cards AND high #'s they are quite expensive.

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Posted By: leon

Any card I want to buy

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Posted By: Bob

Sometimes the key card is not necessarily the highest priced card in a set but is one which is extremely tough to find, i.e. the Tattoo Orbit Levey (because Levey was Jewish and his card is highly sought by many Jewish card collectors besides its being short-printed and thus scarce).

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Posted By: jay behrens

The answer depends somewhat on how you collect, but generally boils down to the rarities, whether it's the toughest commons in a set or if you collect a plater, the rarest card of that player. This doesn't always translate into the most expensive cards.

Jay

The richest person is not the one who has the most, but the one who needs the least.

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Posted By: Jason L

thanks for the clarifications.

What I should have put in the original post is my follow-up question, and that is:
has anyone ever put together a published list of "key cards" for each set?

sounds like probably not, if a key card may have some subjectivity to it, but I thought it might be an interesting list to see...

thanks again!

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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

1955 Topps Monte Irvin PSA 8

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Posted By: Steve Murray

you raise an interesting question regarding the "key card" in various sets. Without regard to condition each set likely has a recognized "key". My contributions might be:

1911 Zeenut Bohen;
1912 Zeenut Bancroft;
1913 Zeenut Heilmann;
1914 Zeenut Calvo;
1915 Zeenut McMullin, (Risberg and Williams running a close 2nd and 3rd)
1919 Zeenut Arbuckle
1922 Zeenut Thorpe

1911 Obak Weaver

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Posted By: Jason L

Perhaps this might be a neat project to start on a rainy (at least in NY tri-state area) Friday.

Let's use this thread to accumulate a master list of what people view to be the key card(s) for each set. All comments welcome and I would happy to assemble the data coming in...
Such a list could well be thought to be the most important set (and toughest type card subset) of cards in the hobby

I'll modify the thread title

interesting, - thanks again Steve.

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Posted By: Frank Wakefield

A key card is a card that would be one of the most expensive, or most difficult to obtain, in a set. Wagner is a key card in the entire white border T206 set. Mitchell is a key card in the American Caramel E90-1 set. A key card doesn't necessarily have to be a Hall of Fame player. And some sets have several key cards.

If a kid in the late 60s is swapping all of his old and new baseball cards with his buddies, swapping for any and all 1967 Topps, as they gather in garages and basements on rainy days... when he gets done and he still lacks Mike Shannon (#605) Tommy John (#609) and Johnny Roseboro (#365), I'd think of Shannon and John as key cards at that time. They are high numbers, not as plentiful. There are lots of Roseboro's out there, the kid will get one. The kid obviously has a Carew rookie (#569) and a Seaver rookie (#581), because as someone wisely observed here recently, as kids we didn't want cards of rookies, we wanted the stars. TODAY the Carew and Seaver cards would be keys. But back in 1968 and 1969 I don't think they were key cards. My recollection is that when the new year's cards came out, the swap value of the previous years' cards went down dramatically. Only old cards of stars retained any value at all. Or maybe cards of your favorite team. I recall swapping extra Mantle's and Maris' cards away, 'cause I was a Cardinals fan, and didn't care much for the Yankees. And that was not the only mistake I made in my long adolescence.

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Posted By: Brian

T212-1 Gandel

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Posted By: Bob

T212-1 Gandil
T212-2 (175) Miller SF because Brian buys every single card of his grandfather in existence!
T212-2 (150) Mundorf
T212-3 Weaver
1933 DeLong Lindstrom.
T207 Donlin
1933 Tattoo Orbit Levey and Alexander
E94 Wagner
E93 Wagner
E98 Vaughn and Coombs
E97 Keeler
E90-1 Jackson and Mitchell
T210 Take your pick although Joe Jax if you are collecting the set or series 8
T213-3 Cobb overprint

Just a few from sets I have collected...