What Do You Consider Mickey Mantle's RC?

[terjung]

People give particular cards the misnomer of being a rookie card all the time. Just because it is more popular doesn't make it his rookie card. Mantle is not the only example of this. T206 Wagner is another one that unlearned people call his rookie card. Shoot, I've even seen people call errantly call the '33 Goudey Ruth's RC and that's not even close.

With prewar collecting, there is some ambiguity with regard to whether a particular issue is considered a rookie "card", (ie. cabinet, postcard, team image, pins, magazine insert, etc.). The dates for prewar issues also aren't always as clear either, but for post war collecting, it isn't as gray. The 1951 Bowman is clearly Mickey's RC. I've seen the '52 be called the "Topps" RC since it is his first image on a Topps card, but even that is a bit of a stretch, imo.

[4815162342]

I haven't read a Beckett in years, but remember the term "XRC" being applied to the "real" but unpopular rookie cards, while the cards that popularly known as rookies would be labeled "RC". Ridiculous! The first card of a player is the rookie card and nothing else.

[steve B]

Yeah, XRC was used for rookie cards from traded sets. That was a bit of a compromise after they said rookie cards had to be from a "major nationally distributed set" Which was put in the defenition to exclude draft pick and highschool all star sets. Jeter was in a couple of those, and was probably one of the main drivers for the change. After all, the highschool all star set only had a print run of something like 5000, not nearly enough for all the dealers at the time to get in on the action.

And with McGwire they had a different problem, a card in a major set that wasn't actually a major league card. I think that's about the time the FTC- first Topps card designation came along.

The whole "rookie card" thing actually made sense up till roughly the late 1970's. after that it got sillier and sillier.

Steve B