Pre-80s Rookie Card Craze?

[brianp-beme]

I think a really good question is when the "Rookie" or first card became a significant factor in Pre-WW2 vintage collecting. I have been collecting vintage for 30 years now, and was not aware of much buzz about vintage HOF rookies during my first couple of decades...it wasn't mentioned often when people were selling cards or in auctions. To me it always seemed like a modern day card phenomena, and I was just fine about it. It wasn't until about a dozen years or so that the rookie card craze finally started to gradually make its way over to the vintage side. To me, being a moderate budget collector, it just meant that certain cards were now going to be unobtainable.

Anyone else notice that shift, or have a different viewpoint on the vintage rookie market and when it became an important factor?

Brian

[bcbgcbrcb]

In my opinion, the vintage HOF Rookie Card craze began in the last 10 years when a small handful of affluent collectors decided to go that route and widely publicized their collections. Over the past few years, a couple of these individuals have stepped out of that realm and the collector interest seems to have waned overall.

I still believe that this is an extremely interesting and fun venue of viantage card collecting and have shared a lot of my research with fellow collectors in the hopes of sparking more interest in this area of collecting.

[novakjr]

Originally Posted by brianp-beme

I think a really good question is when the "Rookie" or first card became a significant factor in Pre-WW2 vintage collecting. I have been collecting vintage for 30 years now, and was not aware of much buzz about vintage HOF rookies during my first couple of decades...it wasn't mentioned often when people were selling cards or in auctions. To me it always seemed like a modern day card phenomena, and I was just fine about it. It wasn't until about a dozen years or so that the rookie card craze finally started to gradually make its way over to the vintage side. To me, being a moderate budget collector, it just meant that certain cards were now going to be unobtainable.

Anyone else notice that shift, or have a different viewpoint on the vintage rookie market and when it became an important factor?

Brian

I think alot of the thing with pre-war HOF rookies is a combination of factors. When considering pre-war cards, the modern rookie card rules generally aren't used, and a player's first card has a tendecy to be from some obscure local issue. When it comes to pre-war, I don't find myself too concerned with the rookie factor. I'm just happy to find cards of those players that were issued during their careers(obviously, the earlier the better though). I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking this way in regards to pre-war hall of famers.

[Big Ben]

I started collecting around 1972. One rookie card craze that I remember was that of the 1977 Topps Dale Murphy card around the 1982-1983 time frame when Murphy won back to back MVP awards. I still remember trading one of my Murphy rookie cards for a 1955 Topps Ted Williams.

[Bridwell]

I remember that the dealers started hyping some Topps cards that were the Rookie card of the great players. It started around 1978, but didn't take off until the 1980's. By the end of the 80's, it was effecting pre-war card prices. The whole thing was silly to me. Dealers would say the Cy Young T-206 was his 'rookie card' even though he was 40 years old and already had won almost 500 games by then!