What is a rookie card? That has become an age-old question in the hobby that has become highly subjective with an ever-changing definition over the past few decades.

During the hobby’s vintage era, which is classified as when Topps monopolized the industry prior to the 1980s, the definition of a rookie card was cut and dry. A player’s rookie card was their first card. Collectors can easily point to rookie cards of all-time greats like Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente, Nolan Ryan, and Tom Seaver.

The 1980s brought collectors more options as a federal court ordered the end of Topps’ monopoly on the hobby, thus ushering in the introduction of card brands like Donruss and Fleer in the early part of the decade and Score and Upper Deck towards the end of the decade.

Topps quickly began taking steps to retake the industry by taking the idea of their Topps Traded set to another level. First released in 1974, Topps began experimenting by releasing a 44-card traded set randomly inserted in packs toward the end of their production run. They did it again in 1976 but shelved the venture. With Donruss and Fleer entering the fray in 1981, Topps turned its Topps Traded set into a 132-card set printed on a different stock than their flagship set and released the product directly to hobby shops as factory sets only.

Fleer eventually followed suit, by releasing their version of the traded set as Fleer Update in 1984. Both sets included cards of players that changed teams prior to and during the season, along with rookie cards of the hottest new stars in the game. This action led to the creation of the confounding XRC, or extended rookie card.

XRC was a classification given to rookie cards that appeared in sets like Topps Traded and Fleer Update. Mets legends Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden are notable examples of players with famed XRCs, released respectively in 1983 and 1984. As with all players with an XRC, cards of Strawberry and Gooden released in the flagship sets the following year kept the classification of rookie cards because Topps Traded and Fleer Update sets were not cards that collectors could pull out of a pack.

The creation of the XRC and the decision to allow a rookie card classification to carry over to the following season for players with XRC created confusion throughout the industry.

Then came 1988 when the Score brand debuted and included the rookie card of the game’s most widely known top minor league prospect, Gregg Jefferies. Donruss followed suit by including Jefferies in their 1988 release despite Jefferies not yet appearing in a major league game. The XRC designation was retired after the release of the 1988 baseball cards products, but the XRC designation stayed in use for cards that previously had that designation.

The 1989 baseball card release continued the new trend of including top minor league prospects in their flagship releases with Ken Griffey Jr. given the distinction of being card number one in Upper Deck’s debut set. Topps joined the party when they decided to resurrect the Bowman name by including Griffey Jr. in their new Bowman product, along with rookie cards of players that had yet to play a major league game, like Robin Ventura, Rico Brogna, and 1989 Nationa League Rookie of the Year Jerome Walton. This trend continued into the 1990s as Topps and Score began including cards of the previous year’s first-round draft picks. Then Topps changed everything in 1992 with the release of their Bowman product.

The 1992 Bowman release changed the landscape of the industry by devoting roughly half of the cards to rookie cards of top minor league prospects and draft picks, some of which never appeared in a major league game. Adopting the moniker “The Home of the Rookie Card”, 1992 Bowman included rookie cards of future Hall of Famers Mike Piazza, Mariano Rivera, Pedro Martinez, and Trevor Hoffman, future superstar Manny Ramirez, all-stars Troy Percival and Garret Anderson, and industry darlings like Jeffrey Hammonds, Michael Tucker, Brien Taylor, and Frank Rodriguez. The set also included rookie cards of former Mets such as Carlos Delgado, Alex Ochoa, Damon Buford, Butch Huskey, Mike Hampton, Cliff Floyd, Turk Wendell, Jerry DiPoto, Pat Mahomes, and many more.

The trend of including rookie cards of minor leaguers continued for more than a decade when the MLBPA intervened in 2006. For decades, Topps and the MLBPA had a long agreed-upon licensing agreement that allowed Topps to print baseball cards of members of the MLBPA, and the MLBPA received compensation from the licensing agreement. The issue, as the MLBPA saw it, was that Topps was not restricted by the agreement from signing contracts with hundreds of minor leaguers every year with the intention of including them in major league licensed baseball card releases. In some instances, there would be a two or more season gap from when a player would have their rookie card appear in a baseball card product before they even made the major league debut, but a more frequent occurrence, these minor leaguers would retire without playing one major league game.

There are hundreds of examples of these occurrences, such as David Wright. Wright’s rookie card was included in Upper Deck’s 2001 Prospect Premieres release, yet the Captain didn’t make his major league debut until 2004. Chris Roberts, who along with Preston Wilson, was drafted in the first round of the 1992 Amateur Draft out of Florida State was included in several baseball card products from 1993 to 1995, yet never made it past AAA.

With the buy in of Topps and Upper Deck, the MLBPA created a rule in 2006 that stipulated a player’s rookie card could not be included in a major league licensed product until after a player’s major league debut. This created a problem for players that had already appeared on cards prior to the rule taking effect with the MLBPA incorrectly assuming collectors would ignore rookie cards printed prior to the new rule taking effect for 2007 baseball card releases. They were wrong.

Despite the new rule, Topps continued to release products with cards of minor leaguers, which led to yet another rule that made nearly all Bowman products hit the market minor league sets. That made popular hobby products such as Bowman Prospects, Bowman Chrome Prospects, and Bowman Draft all minor league products and none of the card included in those sets would be classified as rookie cards. Taking it a step further, cards included in insert sets or parallel sets would also not be classified as rookie cards.

So, for collectors in today’s hobby, what is a rookie card? Let’s take a look at the baseball cards of current Mets centerfielder Brandon Nimmo. Drafted in 2011, Nimmo’s first appearance was in 2011 Bowman Draft.

The card on the left is Nimmo’s Bowman Draft base card. The card in the middle is Bowman Draft Chrome, and the card on the right is the gold parallel of his Bowman Draft base card. Conventional wisdom would consider these cards to be Nimmo’s rookie cards since they are his first appearances on a baseball card. Based on the rule from the MLBPA, the Bowman Draft release, along with the Bowman Draft Chrome release, are considered minor league products. The Gold parallel of the Bowman Draft base card would not be considered a rookie card simply because it is a parallel of the Bowman Draft base set. Either way, these aren’t rookie cards.

Just because these cards aren’t considered rookie cards does not mean they cannot have more value than Nimmo’s actual rookie card. In some instances, these cards of players included in Bowman Draft or Bowman Prospects releases may have similar value or more value than a player’s actual rookie card.

Next, Nimmo has several cards included in Topps Heritage Minor Leagues and Topps Pro Debut releases. Excluded from any baseball card products in 2012, Nimmo’s inclusion in 2013’s Topps Heritage Minor Leagues and Topps Pro Debut (top row, first and second from the left) were his only cards printed that year. Topps was sure to include Nimmo in both products from their 2014 (top row, third and fourth from left) and 2015 (bottom row, first and second from left), but was only included in the 2016 Topps Pro Debut (bottom row, far right). Like every card included in Topps Heritage Minor Leagues and Topps Pro Debut releases, players are featured in minor leaguer uniforms, so they’re not rookie cards.


Topps made the decision not to include Nimmo in any of its 2012 baseball card products, and why would they? Scouts panned the Mets selection of Nimmo as being a reach since his home state of Wyoming did not have high school baseball. Most scouts disagreed with then-general manager Sandy Alderson’s assessment that Nimmo would hit for average and develop enough speed and power to become an everyday centerfielder. Not to mention, commenters on MMO all swore Nimmo would be a bust.

With the exception of their Topps Heritage Minor Leagues and Topps Pro Debut 2013 releases, Nimmo was not included in any baseball card products until 2014 when he appeared in Bowman Prospects, Bowman Chrome Prospects, and Bowman Platinum Prospects. Nimmo didn’t fare much better in 2015 as he was only included in the Bowman Chrome Prospects and Bowman’s Best Top Prospects sets.

It wasn’t until 2016 when Brandon Nimmo made his major league debut and finally after five years had a rookie card: 2016 Topps Update card number US74. Nimmo appeared on two other cards in 2016, Bowman Scouts 100 and Bowman Chrome Turn Two with Amed Rosario, neither of which would be considered a rookie card since they are from insert sets, so it leaves Nimmo’s 2016 Topps Update card as his only official rookie card.

It’s not often in today’s hobby that a player, let alone a player that has turned into the type of player that Nimmo is, has only one rookie card. Yet Nimmo has managed to not only accomplish that feat, Nimmo managed to do so with card that captured a special moment in his career. Look closely at the picture of Nimmo.

When I purchased this card, I knew exactly when the picture was taken because I watched the game this picture was from: July 1, 2016 at Citi Field against the Cubs. Facing Jason Hammel in the bottom of the fourth with runners on second and third, Nimmo crushed a 1-0 pitch over the right-centerfield fence for his first career home run. Nimmo sprinted the bases as Gary Cohen proclaimed, “Nimmo hits one to Wyoming.” After returning to the dugout, the crowd at Citi Field asked for and received a curtain call from Nimmo. And that is when this picture was taken. Nimmo standing on the dugout steps at Citi Field, pumping his fist in the air and grinning ear to ear after getting a curtain call for his first major league home run.

Now that picture is forever memorialized on his only rookie card, the 2016 Topps Update card number US74.