What is a rookie card /RC ? Football

[cwpucks]

I'm a hockey card collector and posted this question in that section on this site and got a range of answers and some i did not expect. So i thought i would ask the same question in Football, Baseball, and Basketball and see what Collectors of their sports view as a RC/Rookie Card.

Since the 70's when the hobby started to become a business a RC/Rookie Card was always viewed a a players 1st year card found in a base set or traded set or a main stream product. But in the last 20 years we now have parallels, inserts and insert sets (a complete 100 to 400+ card set found randomly inserted in a main stream products packs that is not a parallel).

so the not so simple question is what do you or your sport consider a players RC/Rookie card? Are parallels RC/Rookie Cards? Are Insert sets RC/Rookie cards? Are inserts Rookie Cards? or is any card made in the players Rookie year a RC/Rookie card?

[FireRob]

Personally I like the base card only school of thought. I get annoyed by the thought of having to count parallels and inserts. How ever the “market” says otherwise.

[cwpucks]

One other thing to consider do we need new monikers for Rookie cards?

RC (rookie card) for the true rookie card from a base set.
RYC (rookie year card) for all parallels, inserts and insert sets
PRC (pre rookie card) for all cards created before the players professorial rookie year -Mainly in Baseball and Hockey

[jplcom]

For me it was always a set's first base card in the first year of the player depicted. A guy like James Harrison had to wait a couple years before he got a proper RC. Joe Montana's rookie card is in 1981, despite being drafted in 1979. Subset cards, 2nd base card in a set (1993 Topps Drew Bledsoe #130 vs #400 for example), inserts, parallels, all didn't count. They were rookie year cards, but not rookie cards.

Once manufacturers started making "base" cards look like this:

2017-Panini-Gold-Standard-Patrick-Mahomes-RC-400x286.jpg
*2017 Panini Gold Standard Patrick Mahomes RC Auto Jersey #/49

Then my opinion changed to anything from their first year is a rookie card. If that's a base card, then inserts/parallels from other sets are really just semantics at that point.