Let's talk about "over-looked" true Rookie cards....Pre-war and early Post-war

[seanofjapan]

Reading this makes me wonder why the hobby doesn't have a term that designates a player's best or most desirable card, regardless of whether it is a rookie card (by whatever definition) or not. Like their "Key Card" or something, (only to designate the player's most sought after card rather than the most sought after card in a given set).

Like obviously Mantle's 52 Topps card is his key card even though it isn't his rookie. But there are lots of other examples of players whose best cards (here we can use market value as a proxy for "best", though that is also a debatable usage) aren't their rookies. Everyone knows which ones they are, yet we don't have a commonly shared word to describe that. Which seems strange to me.

I raise this because most of this debate on what constitutes a true "rookie card" seems to focus on relatively arbitrary points (whether a guy had played an MLB game yet at the time the card came out, how widespread the set was distributed, etc) which don't really seem to affect the value of the card to collectors much. Does anybody care that Carl Yastrzemski hadn't played in MLB yet when his 1960 Topps card came out? No, or at least not enough to affect the desirability of that card.

Looking back on how Beckett used to develop various terms to describe things that weren't quite rookie cards back in the 80s, it always struck me that their main reason for doing so was to somehow recognize key cards which were problematic to describe as rookie cards, which illustrates the problem. Like when they used to put "FTC" after "First Topps cards" it was obvious they were just doing that to accomodate the 52 Mantle (and then having invented the term applied it to every other FTC that came along even though nobody really cared). Same with "XRC" for cards in the update sets, only their purpose there was to maintain the "RC" designation for the regular cards in the following year's sets.

[Seven]

Originally Posted by seanofjapan

Reading this makes me wonder why the hobby doesn't have a term that designates a player's best or most desirable card, regardless of whether it is a rookie card (by whatever definition) or not. Like their "Key Card" or something, (only to designate the player's most sought after card rather than the most sought after card in a given set).

Like obviously Mantle's 52 Topps card is his key card even though it isn't his rookie. But there are lots of other examples of players whose best cards (here we can use market value as a proxy for "best", though that is also a debatable usage) aren't their rookies. Everyone knows which ones they are, yet we don't have a commonly shared word to describe that. Which seems strange to me.

Concerning the first portion of your post, the only reason why the 52 Mantle is considered his "key card" is because of where it was printed and what happened with the high series cards from topps' set that year. Had Mantle not been a member of the high series or had Berger not commissioned a literal boat load of them to be dumped in the ocean, I'd argue that Mantle's 52 card would probably fall somewhere in the range that his 52 Bowman is in, right now.

Objectively speaking, I don't even think it's his best looking card. Sure the 52 topps style is beautiful, But his 53 topps looks better, I'd argue the same about his 56 as well as his 51 Bowman.

[seanofjapan]

Originally Posted by Seven

Concerning the first portion of your post, the only reason why the 52 Mantle is considered his "key card" is because of where it was printed and what happened with the high series cards from topps' set that year. Had Mantle not been a member of the high series or had Berger not commissioned a literal boat load of them to be dumped in the ocean, I'd argue that Mantle's 52 card would probably fall somewhere in the range that his 52 Bowman is in, right now.

Objectively speaking, I don't even think it's his best looking card. Sure the 52 topps style is beautiful, But his 53 topps looks better, I'd argue the same about his 56 as well as his 51 Bowman.

All true and I agree with that, though I wasn't necessarily questioning why the 52 Mantle is his key card but rather why we don't have a generally accepted hobby term to describe cards like that (regardless of the interesting histories which caused them to be so).

It strikes me that if we had such a term which became generally accepted in the same way "rookie card" (by whatever definition) is today this would probably affect the way a lot of cards are valued.

Probably the best example would be players whose rookie cards are on multi-player ones, compared to their early "solo" appearance cards.

Take Gary Carter for example (I'm an Expos fan). His 1975 Topps card is his most valuable (ignoring post-career limited auto cards or whatever). But he's just a little head shared with three other guys. Its not great looking.
His 1976 Topps card in contrast is really beautiful and colorful and shows a young Gary in all his glory. The two cards are from sets that are about equal in terms of how many exist, etc. Yet the 1976 Topps Carter is worth less solely because we can't attach a commonly recognized term to it like we can for the 1975 Topps Carter even tough almost everybody would agree the 1976 is a nicer card of him.

If we collectors had a term like a player's "Key Card" (or something) that we all knew and recognized the meaning of instantly which we could attach to the 1976 Topps Gary Carter, I think it likely that it would be way more sought after than his 75 card is. But we don't, so his 1975 Topps card wins because we all know what a rookie card is (doctrinal debates about the precise definition of the term aside). Which is kind of a weird distortion of the baseball card market if you think of it.

That is just one example, there are quite a few others with much more significant value that I think one could discuss. Guys whose rookie cards are in easy to find lower series, but who have cards later in their career in hard to find high series are maybe another example.

[HistoricNewspapers]

Originally Posted by seanofjapan

All true and I agree with that, though I wasn't necessarily questioning why the 52 Mantle is his key card but rather why we don't have a generally accepted hobby term to describe cards like that (regardless of the interesting histories which caused them to be so).

It strikes me that if we had such a term which became generally accepted in the same way "rookie card" (by whatever definition) is today this would probably affect the way a lot of cards are valued.

Probably the best example would be players whose rookie cards are on multi-player ones, compared to their early "solo" appearance cards.

Take Gary Carter for example (I'm an Expos fan). His 1975 Topps card is his most valuable (ignoring post-career limited auto cards or whatever). But he's just a little head shared with three other guys. Its not great looking.
His 1976 Topps card in contrast is really beautiful and colorful and shows a young Gary in all his glory. The two cards are from sets that are about equal in terms of how many exist, etc. Yet the 1976 Topps Carter is worth less solely because we can't attach a commonly recognized term to it like we can for the 1975 Topps Carter even tough almost everybody would agree the 1976 is a nicer card of him.

If we collectors had a term like a player's "Key Card" (or something) that we all knew and recognized the meaning of instantly which we could attach to the 1976 Topps Gary Carter, I think it likely that it would be way more sought after than his 75 card is. But we don't, so his 1975 Topps card wins because we all know what a rookie card is (doctrinal debates about the precise definition of the term aside). Which is kind of a weird distortion of the baseball card market if you think of it.

That is just one example, there are quite a few others with much more significant value that I think one could discuss. Guys whose rookie cards are in easy to find lower series, but who have cards later in their career in hard to find high series are maybe another example.

I'm in the minority of enjoying the multi player rookie cards better, because to me it captures the essence of the time when the player was unknown and not good enough to warrant having his own card, and thus harkens back to the time when the HOFer was just first cutting his teeth.

I think threads like these, if put out in the mainstream, would simply educate collectors more and let them make determinations better, and then contrived classifications won't really matter as much.

A collector can still call the 1949 Leaf Jackie Robinson his rookie card based on the 'Beckett rule', but then also realize that there are actual baseball cards of Jackie Robinson made before the Leaf. It gives collectors more options. In this case, since the Leaf is the most expensive of all of them, it actually gives the collectors a more affordable option to have a baseball card that is earlier...and then you can wink when the Leaf card gets the press knowing you have an even earlier(more rare/better) card of Robinson.

Same for the '51 Bowman. Its nice as a collector knowing that you have Mickey Mantle's rookie card...and then you can nod with pride knowing you got a 'one up' on the other card when that gets all the press.