What is a rookie card?

[MR.M's Cards]

I am of the opinion that neither his compendium nor OPC are rookies...and right now he does not have rookie card, and never will. For those that think his compendium blue card is his rookie.....what if a player in compendium was never leveled up to the blue or gold? So the card was never made/never existed and should not be a part of the checklist for that set. Then what card becomes his rookie ?

[DaveS]

I am of the opinion that neither his compendium nor OPC are rookies...and right now he does not have rookie card, and never will. For those that think his compendium blue card is his rookie.....what if a player in compendium was never leveled up to the blue or gold? So the card was never made/never existed and should not be a part of the checklist for that set. Then what card becomes his rookie ?

He can't just not have a RC. Either the industry standard definition of RC changes to allow Compendium to qualify as an RC or it's his 20-21 cards (starting with OPC). Of course that's all on the assumption that UD doesn't sneak him into 19-20 Premier and/or The Cup.

[MR.M's Cards]

There is a rule that says every player has to have a rookie card? Maybe Francouz is the first player to have rookie year cards and not an actual rookie card. What if a player has a canvas young gun but not a regular young gun............and then doesnt appear in any other releases for the rest of the year. We are now saying that if he has a base card in series 1 the following year then that is his rookie card and the canvas was? a pre rookie? I cant think of any examples of this, and it is unlikely to happen but hypothetically? There are players who only have canvas young guns and not regular ones, although they have rookies in other releases.

[30ranfordfan]

I've been having this exact same debate with a few people already. What it boils down to is the current and long-standing definition of a Rookie Card. Because Compendium has online-only distribution and the base cards are digital-only, it doesn't qualify as a true RC (unless we're going to adjust the definition) which makes his 2020-21 O-Pee-Chee base card his first true RC unless UD sneaks him into 19-20 UD Premier or The Cup.

I've heard some people arguing that the Compendium Blue parallel is his true RC but again, by the definition of an RC, it can't be an RC because it's a parallel card.

There's been a lot of good posts here, since my last one. The compendium question is really a good one - assuming that one still cares about the traditional definition of a rookie card (and it's obvious that some do not).

There's two questions here, when it comes to it being a "true" rookie card. The first is a question of distribution, and I would suggest that if collectors don't consider an online only distribution to be "legit", they're going to continue to be more and more dissapointed as time goes on. This is not something that's going away, it's only going to become a bigger part of Upper Deck's business.

The second is a question of base vs parallel. My personal take: Compendium doesn't challenge the definition of what a "rookie card" is, it challenges the definition of what a base card is. Is the base card really a base card, if it only exists as an image on UD ePack?

The argument against a Compendium Blue being a RC is based off of "it's a parallel, so it can't be". I'm quite comfortable calling it a base card though.... since it's the most basic tier of card from that set, that you can physically own.

[30ranfordfan]

He can't just not have a RC. Either the industry standard definition of RC changes to allow Compendium to qualify as an RC or it's his 20-21 cards (starting with OPC). Of course that's all on the assumption that UD doesn't sneak him into 19-20 Premier and/or The Cup.

There is a rule that says every player has to have a rookie card? Maybe Francouz is the first player to have rookie year cards and not an actual rookie card. What if a player has a canvas young gun but not a regular young gun............and then doesnt appear in any other releases for the rest of the year. We are now saying that if he has a base card in series 1 the following year then that is his rookie card and the canvas was? a pre rookie? I cant think of any examples of this, and it is unlikely to happen but hypothetically? There are players who only have canvas young guns and not regular ones, although they have rookies in other releases.

There is no rule that says he must have a RC, but the definition of a rookie card makes it impossible for him to have base cards, and no rookie card.

If he gets added to Premier or The Cup, that will make this discussion even better. I would point out in the details of the cards: The Compendium says "Rookie Card" - the OPC doesn't. While the text on the card.... being in a particular subset or not... that isn't important to me - but it does show that Upper Deck does not consider 2020-21 cards for Francouz to be RCs. Is that because of the Compendium, or is it because they've got something else on the way?

[DaveS]

Basically it just boils down to whether or not you accept the current definition of a true rookie card. If you accept the industry standard definition then Compendium is not an RC. If the industry standard definition is going to be adjusted then yes, Compendium would most likely end up being his RC. However, as it stands now (and again, assuming he doesn't end up in Premier or The Cup) the 20-21 OPC base card is currently his only qualified RC.
It's been mentioned a couple times now about UD not considering the OPC to be a rookie card but deciding what is and is not a rookie card isn't something that UD does or likely has any interest in. There's literally thousands of examples of rookie cards in base sets, including sets that had rookie subsets too, so are we going to go back and delete the RC designation from those cards too just because UD (or Pinnacle, Pacific, Panini, etc.) decided to produce the card as a base card instead of a rookies subset? The 2005-06 UD Mike Green RC is a perfect example. UD put him in the base set instead of the Young Guns subset so by the logic presented re: Francouz, UD didn't consider it to be a rookie card and therefor the RC designation should be removed, right? No, because it's still a rookie card even if it is just part of the base set.

[DaveS]

...and here we have it, direct from Upper Deck themselves. 2020-21 OPC is the first RC of Pavel Francouz according to UD. Guess I should have checked Twitter before typing out that last response, would have saved me some time lol.

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[RGM81]

...and here we have it, direct from Upper Deck themselves. 2020-21 OPC is the first RC of Pavel Francouz according to UD. Guess I should have checked Twitter before typing out that last response, would have saved me some time lol.

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I'm comfortable with that decision being rendered. Does that make Francouz's Compendium an XRC?

[PsychoPig]

As someone who personally is a "true" rookie card collector, I can say that I'm a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to the definition. Oddball sets, XRC's, and parallels have always been a bit of a pain but there's usually some basic logic I could put to whether I consider it a true RC or not.

I fully agree with 30randordfan on the ePack cards though. While I may not be into that, you can't ignore the fact that it exists and that people do collect them and will do so more and more in the future. I think the only thing you can do is try to put some of that same basic logic to it and come to some kind of understanding and the fact that the 'parallel' is the only actual card you can get your physical hands on, does make it the base RC for that set. I think the logic that it's the most basic, common version of the person's card that you can physically own becomes the rule of choice for that type of set.

[MR.M's Cards]

It's been mentioned a couple times now about UD not considering the OPC to be a rookie card but deciding what is and is not a rookie card isn't something that UD does or likely has any interest in


If determining what is a rookie is not something UD does, why did you ask them?