I’m just going to be extra safe and collect them both, hehe
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“Rookie card” is this year’s “trophy card” for “used in a way that is not entirety correct but has wide enough consensus to be considered valid”.
Objectively T18 was released in the Neo premium file before any other Typhlosion in both Japan and the US and is the first Typhlosion card. For many people in the US it was the only Typhlosion they could get through a TV commercial for nearly a year until Neo Genesis came out.
CoroCoro promos you can argue should not be considered rookie since they were not included in an actual set of cards. Personally I do consider them the first official rookie card. T18 was included in Neo Genesis though not Neo 1 in Japan.
Likewise winning a “Trophy Kangaskan” required winning a battle, not ranking to 1st / 2nd / 3rd place.
The dictionary definition has historically been pretty loosely applied in Pokémon.
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I didn’t know PSA graded Pokemon stuff like this
However, I give that label centering a PSA 4
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A rookie card is the card that the majority of collectors define it as in my opinion.
The majority of collectors define the rookie variants of cards present in 1st Edition Base for Gen 1 in the English print.
Each individual can define that word how they like and can define it as japanese cards or non-tcg products, but the majority of collectors would define it as first english set print.
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Consider English = Topps, Japanese = Donruss, Promos = Leaf or whichever way youd like to view it. Take the Ken Griffey Jr. 1989 Rookie- he has one in Donruss, Topps and Upper Deck. The Upper Deck RC is vastly considered his premier rookie card, in part because it was Upper Deck’s first set. It has far outpaced the others in popularity. So when speaking on his rookie card vaguely, most sports collectors would assume you were speaking about his upper deck RC.
Same in this sense with Pokemon. Some would go as far to say that expedition set has Mew’s rookie card. Japanese its clearly the fossil card so would you say the promo is its rookie? maybe. Mere semantics.
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I dunno, I’m happy to call the Southern Island Mew the Rookie English Mew card
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You’re taking the marketing of a card company as a definition of rookie. Companies call their cards rookie cards, the strict definition of rookie card is first released. Like I said sellers can market their cards however they want. They can call a card featuring a player in their rookie season as a rookie card, which the only do because it’s good for marketing.
Wikipedia: A rookie card is a trading card that is the first to feature an athlete after that athlete has participated in the highest level of competition within his or her sport.
Ultimately it doesn’t matter. Nobody really uses the rookie definition for Pokemon as actual marketing, in fact it shouldn’t exist as a term in this hobby at all. Rookie comes from rookie season of sports, and it shouldn’t translate to Pokemon. The only reason we’re discussing this is people know the more popular cards are in the sets where the pokemon are first featured. Therefore there’s a way of saying I want to collect all the ‘rookie’ cards as some sort of status.
I was more interested in the fun of trying to see how people determine the ‘rookie’ card in the various sets that have multiple releases of the same species as a rookie within the same set.
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Keep the term rookie with sports, doesn’t sound appealing at all with pokemon
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As far as I’ve seen the main benefit of the term rookie is in the SMR magazine Pokémon articles. It helps rookie collectors to develop a rookie understanding in Pokémon by calling first appearances rookie cards for them sports guys who are rookies to Pokémon.
Rookie.
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definitely always considered the promo to be the rookie. It was given out for free to a huge line of people at zainy brainy back in the day.
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Damn, Zany Brainy and Noodle Kidoodle…throwbacks
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2020 turned out to be quite a doozy for the pokemon market.
With 2020 now firmly behind us, I thought it might be interesting to visualise the data for “Total Sales Volume Over Time” provided by @pierce on PokemonPrice.com, in a few different ways as review.
The first 3 are for Total Value:
- Basic chart (lightly labelled),2. Scatter (allows for clean view of data points),3. Monthly percentage change.
The following 3 hold the same format but for the Total Sales Count.
Next there is a Running Sum Total for both.
Then finally there is a brief annual report (2016 data omitted due to incomplete year).
I didn’t have time to make it beautiful so please excuse the cookie cutter outputs from Tableau.
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Have you guys seen what happened to special delivery pikachu prices? I’m pretty sure prices have spiked because of that one psa 10 on auction right now? What are your guys’ thoughts on it? Will the price stay at $200-300? Or will they drop back down to what it was before(~$100)?
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Awesome data as always rainbow. Thx
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Who knows. Kind of reminds me of how the munch mimikyu jumped in price. The pikachu is hard to grade. Around 10% of the cards get a psa 10 so far and this card was only available for a short time, but who knows how many were printed.
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Sorry in advance, just wanted to chime in because sports is my forte
The most iconic rookie card in all of modern sports - the Michael Jordan Fleer, isn’t his first card, or from his rookie season
at a higher level, the second most iconic sports card in any sport (vintage or otherwise), the 1952 Mickey Mantle rookie, is released in his second year (and is his second card, 1951 bowman being first)
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Whats more iconic than Mantle 52’? - Wagner?
First Topps card though, should be noted.
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Yeah, Wagner would be #1
and yeah, first Topps card - but Bowman isn’t some regional release. It’s a very legit card, and undervalued imo… but the market and most consider the 52 to be the rookie. It’s definitely treated like the rookie
Although, ofcourse there are those who say it’s the 51, and everyone else sucks for thinking its the 52 haha
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Yeah plus the “destroyed” component to the topps set
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