Baseball Hall of Fame Rookie Cards Discussion

[Shankweather]

Originally Posted by bcbgcbrcb

Exactly, Stephen. The same goes all the way back to the 1880’s and N172’s. They were issued primarily for the Major Leaguers of the day but also included numerous minor leaguers as well. Handling this way qualifies rookie cards like Kid Nichols and others.

That's right. Not giving up my Old Judge Clark Griffith "Milwaukee" RC.

[bcbgcbrcb]

Don’t.

Over the years, many changes have taken place which affected rookie card status. The majority of the time, this has to do with changes to the issue dates of certain catalogued sets. These included: Novelty Cutlery postcards, R315’s and many others. As new evidence comes forward, rookie card status sometimes has to be updated for some individuals. Ross Youngs is an example where a player’s first name was misidentified in the W514 strip card set and was not known to be Ross up until about 10 years ago. That update made the W514 his new rookie card instead of National Caramel. You just have to always be aware that this could happen and that includes spending a lot of money on what was once believed to be a rookie card and later was discovered not to be. It comes with the territory and if you want to play this game, you have to live with it. This happened to me three different times with the Novelty Cutlery postcard set and Walter Johnson, Tris Speaker and Eddie Collins. Set was originally catalogued as 1907-09 but has since been determined to be a c1910 issue.

[Exhibitman]

I tend to go with the earlier collectible items and a broader definition simply because the more restrictive the criteria, the more items are left out, often to the point of absurdity. A player might have ten or more years of MLB cards, yet that history will be ignored in favor of an artificial distinction. Just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. It is easy in an era of nationally issued cards to demand a mainstream issue across the country to be a RC, but that just wasn't the experience before WWII.

So many of our concepts in this regard are based on tradition or inertia or some guide that someone wrote.

[BioCRN]

It would be nice to be able to accurately rank the hobby's opinions about what aspects of a pre-war RC actually matter. I'm not as experienced with the audience of opinions as some of you guys, but the people I've talked with are as all over the place as the opinions in this thread. That's not necessarily a bad thing, it's something to talk about and that's part of the hobby.

There's opinions on RC's that I can understand, but I don't personally follow for my collection.

I'm not willing to die on the hills I choose to stand on in the "What's a RC" battle, but there's stuff I count as RC's that others have a legit reason to say they don't count (regional issues, (WG)game cards) and some stuff I don't count (oversized/exhibits) that others argue absolutely count.

Until the hobby finds some consensus on things most people can agree on I'm collecting my way and arguing my view on why my 1934 Batter-Up Augie Galan is his RC while others would call it a XRC and some would say it shouldn't count as either because it's a "novelty" card and not a real baseball card.

[bcbgcbrcb]

All that you mentioned would qualify as rookie card candidates to me.