You must be logged in to post a comment. Like this: Like Loading Thanks, Braden Loading Hey there Braden, Good question. Loading Comments One of the most common questions we get has to do with rookie cards. For the past ten years, this means that the product must be from Upper Deck, or if it was from to , Upper Deck or Panini.
Cards from non-licensed producers such as In The Game and, more recently, Leaf, do not qualify. They can still be highly valued since they are usually only printed in small quantities for the local market. Cards are produced of players as early as their first season in the Canadian Hockey League.
This part is where things can get very tricky for collectors. Many of the popular releases today will have, in addition to their regular base set, a number of parallels and insert sub-sets. For every release, there can be only one Rookie Card.
Outside of a few exceptions, defining a rookie card was easy and most everyone followed a similar logic. In later years, Topps ended up with an advantage, though. They have a grandfather clause with their licensing that allows them to sign players to individual contracts. As a result, they had a window to land players as soon as they were drafted and put them in their sets.
In many cases, they beat their competitors by several years. This eventually led to a changing of the rules that was supposed to both level the playing field and make things easier. That never happened. Before the baseball season, the MLBPA announced some changes that were meant to make defining rookie cards easier.
Both Topps and Upper Deck were on board but, honestly, things just got more confusing and a window for a new breed of pre-rookies opened. With the rule change, official rookie cards were only made after a player appeared on a team's man roster.
In its most basic form, it was a great idea. Collectors chase rookie cards when they're first-year players. The rule has had great success in hockey.
Although not an official rule, it's like this in basketball and football too as players generally make their team's rosters fresh after the draft and don't spend several years developing in a minor league system.
But the new baseball card rule had some issues right off the bat. Many players had fully licensed cards from and before. Ryan Braun comes to mind. But with this new rule, the MLBPA expected collectors to all of a sudden disregard the rookie card label and chase his cards instead. Not likely. Topps didn't help matters either by continuing to insert freshly drafted prospects in their Bowman sets.
But they were following the rules mandated to them by making them a separately numbered insert set. That may be true, but it's still problematic as these prospect cards carry the same design elements as the base veteran cards, are inserted at similar rates and picture players in their MLB uniforms. These prospect cards are also the main selling point in the Bowman marketing materials.
So here we have cards that look like rookies save for a slight numbering variation on the back and one missing logo. At the same time, several competing non-licensed sets started coming out. They rose from lost licensees like Playoff now Panini and Razor now Leaf. These were high-quality sets that included lots of top prospects, autographs and inserts. Collectors accepted these sets in higher regard than traditional minor league issues. They also helped create a market for prospect cards that were, again, better than minor league cards and, in many instances, almost on par with official major league rookies.
With full licensing becoming less of an issue on the baseball card landscape, a side effect has been what to make of the Bowman "prospect" cards. The market is often holding them at a higher value than official rookie cards. But we're supposed to dance around the fact that they're not? For new collectors, this makes little sense. From here on out, the instructions will assume that you are logged in to your Beckett account.
Give it a try. Grab a card from the stacks on your desk and simply type those things into the search bar. Occasionally it can be hard to tell if a jersey number is prominent as well. Simple Search: Name and Card Number. Four cards to choose from — two of which are pictured. Even if I ignore the pictures, I just need to go down the list to eliminate the parallels. This particular set happens to have the set name labeled on the back, which also helps.
Since inserts went mainstream in the s, it has meant a lot more cards, particularly those players in the top tier. Basic inserts usually have a small number of cards compared to base sets. So those perennial all-stars and fan favorites that are squeezed in whenever possible have plenty of cards that are low on a checklist. When it comes to numbering, that means lots of potential search results.
Simply adding that to my search brings a much more manageable list of results. Narrow the results by adding more info like a brand. But we can still bring the results down further without much effort. Usually you have to look on the back in the copyright info. If the card back has stats, you can usually add a year to when they were cutoff to know what year the card came out.
Some sets, particularly baseball, would be released in the off-season in time for Christmas. For example, Donruss Baseball has a copyright. Adding the year made this search even better. As you narrow it down, the Beckett Database can bring down results in other ways.
Your search string might include a serial number, team name, insert name and more. You can also play with the filters in the sidebar. These can narrow broad results without typing anything extra. A collector for much of his life, Ryan focuses primarily on building sets, Montreal Expos and interesting cards.
He's also got one of the most comprehensive collections of John Jaha cards in existence not that there are a lot of them. Got a question, story idea or want to get in touch? You can reach him by email and through Twitter tradercracks.
0コメント