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

[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.