General Forum

Baseball card collectors all know how popular the Topps Heritage/Archives cards are, especially modern day star players who are featured on some of Topps's most classic designs.  With that stated however, there is quite a large void of 'True Rookie Cards' that simply never existed, and I think it would be interesting if Topps would entertain the idea of producing a 'Rookie Cards That Never Were' series.  If Topps believed that it was advantageous to make a set of 'Topps Cards Your Mom Threw Out', I believe they can do this.  It would require a lot of research to come up with a definitive list of players and accurate photo descriptions of course, but I'm sure there are definitely dozens and dozens of missed opportunities, along with a vault of archived photography from back in the day that can be found with just a little effort.  This hypothetical set could include hall of fame players, all-star players who had excellent overall careers, as well as fan-favorites.  Off the top of my head, here are a few major examples that I can think of.....a '56 Frank Robinson, '60 Maury Wills, '68 Reggie Jackson, '77 Eddie Murray, '82 Ryne Sandberg, '84 Joe Carter, '89 Curt Schilling, and an '86 Paul O'Neill.  Maybe if I can come up with an extensive enough list, I can write to Topps and see what they say.  What do you think?       

They actually did do this at one point...I saw it on one of the blogs. But I don't remember which one. (I read a lot of them on a regular basis) I do remember the writer being unhappy that it was only about 10 cards long.

The 1992-93 Topps Archives set is exactly this concept for the NBA, and that was 150 cards, that covered the era from when Topps did not have the NBA license. I always wished they would do sets from pre 1969-70 but they never did.

I'm one of those guys who hasn't come around to throwback cards, for the most part. And, while this isn't a terrible idea, it just adds to the loss of mystique of these old cards. Forgive me for being curmudgeonly, but in my youth, if you said, "Do you have the Brock rookie card!?" it meant something. It meant ONE thing. Now if you say, "Do you have the Bryant rookie card?" there's debate or you're not actually sure because there are 27 different brands and probably an update set that means your base set card isn't the rookie, etc. 

So these rookies that never were might be fun for some, but I don't need to be involved in conversations like this:

"Do you have the Sandberg rookie?"

"Yes, the 2018 one, sure!"

"Huh?" 

v3

For baseball, I'll always consider the Topps base set (not update set) to be the offical rookie card.  You have to draw the line somewhere.  Topps to me is the brand most representative of card collecting based on how long they've been around.

That being said, I can no longer talk about the Topps base set rookie in basketball, hockey or football.  So I am not sure what I consider the "rookie" card for modern day players.  As Vvvergeer was saying above, THE Mattingly rookie, or THE Rose Rookie or THE Henderson rookie meant something and instantly brought a picture to mind.  I lament that this facet of card collecting appears to be gone.

This is true, I myself am not a big fan of the throwback cards either, but they are very popular.  Nothing is better than the real thing, and I personally can't stand the billions and billions of so called 'RC' cards that we see today.  I can't say however, that if Topps made a throwback style of a '77 Murray for example, that I would not be interested.  Because '77 should have been his legit rookie card, but they just never made a card of him that year, for whatever reason.  They almost did this in '89 with Ken Griffey Jr. as well, but scrambled just in time to at least include him in their traded set later that same year.  I can't imagine no '89 Topps Griffey Jr. rookie..... 

I do remember the basketball 'Topps Archives' of Jordan in the '84 Topps baseball card design, which was cool, even though they modernized the back of the card....but that is the general idea of what I'm talking about.  '84 was Jordan's true rookie year, and that card shows what could have been had Topps made licensed NBA cards at that time.  There are also a lot of player cards (many hall of fame players), where Topps completely skipped making their card.  Like there going along '65, '67, '68....whoops, no '66....sorry!  That '66 would be the Steve Carlton second year card, and there are many more.      

It's almost painful when you think of the various labels assigned to cards such as:

• RC
• XRC
• Rookie
• Rated Rookie
• Prospect
• Future Star

I liked it best when the RC was actually the following year's card, like Jim Wynn, one of my favorite Astros. His RC is in the '64 Topps set, yet he played in 70 games for Houston in 1963.

Basketball does present challenges to the labeling as our initial poster mentioned. I thought I had Hakeem Olajuwon's first card by owning his RC from the 1986-87 Fleer except that an obscure company Star, put out his first actual card in 1984-85. It's labeled XRC, but if they unearth another one prior to being drafted by the Rockets it may open up our world to XXRC, and then we're really heading toward the obscene!

Star isn't that obscure. 

Well, obscure may not have been the appropriate choice, but they didn't supply cards to my LCS here in Houston so I knew nothing about them through him or anyone else so I was surprised to find an earlier Olajuwon card available. Else, I'd have bought it.

Yeah, Star only was picked up by a few card shops nationwide. The basketball days were just before I started my 7-year run with them. Topps had dropped b-ball and Star basically filled the void. No one wanted to buy b-ball in the 80s (hence why Topps dropped the NBA license). Star was actually putting cards in Crunch-n-Munch because they didn't sell! So they gave them away.

Whenever I see a mention of Star, I have to jump in. :) The reason the Star Co b-ball cards get the XRC is because of the limited (at the time) print runs and distribution methods (direct to shops only, no other outlets). For a while there, Beckett didn't even want to include the 3 years Star made the only b-ball cards around, but they were kinda forced into it based on the popularity they saw in the early 90s.

We did finally get some of our single-player baseball sets into Toys R Us (1987 or 1988) and later on, we got the non-sport stuff into convenience stores (1992). That helped our cause - a little.

I was going to check an old 1990 Beckett to see if Star was even shown, but you answered my question. I checked our database and noticed that they seem to have put out team sets early on. Maybe if I'd eaten Crunch-n-Munch I'd have come to know them much like Mother's Cookies cards.

Other than Star, were there other companies other than Topps, Fleer, Bowman, or other major company that put out cards that would qualify as RCs or XRCs?

Did you work for them?