2013-14 Mundicromo Las Fichas de la Liga 2014 Soccer Forum

I was wondering what other people's opinions on what qualifies as a soccer rookie card. I've narrowed it down to 4 general categories. Mundichromo Las Fichas Quiz cards, Match Attax/Adrenalyn game cards (available in the US), Panini Megacracks cards, and stuff sold in the United States like Topps MLS, Bowman MLS, and Panini Prizm Premier League. I've already eliminated stickers and I'm leaning towards eliminating the Match Attax and Adrenalyn cards since they are game cards. I'm honestly not sure what to classify the Mundichromo cards as. I think they have some stats on the back along with trivia questions but it's hard to find information on them online. This is coming up now since I'm trying to figure out what Carles Gil's (https://www.tcdb.com/Person.cfm/pid/67071/Carles-Gil) rookie card should be. He has a 2013-14 Mundichromo card and a 2013-14 Megacracks card. His next non-game cards sold in the United States come in 2020 in 2020 Bowman MLS and 2020 Topps MLS. Any opinions are appreciated. Thank you for your time.

I'm not sure you can discount stickers as rookies since that was the only widely distributed trading card like item for quite a few years.  I'm not really sure there is a widely accepted definition of soccer rookies -- if you go by the precedent set with the 1986-87 Fleer basketball set, Beckett probably considers the 2014 Panini Prizm World Cup set as rookie cards for 80% of the players.  I'm not sure I'd agree with that (just as I still don't consider the 1986-87 Fleer Jordan a rookie card -- I used to see tons of the Star team sets at card shows in 1985-88, they weren't that hard to find).

-- Andy

You make a good point about the stickers. I guess I'm thinking more about modern players who would have a real card but I should consider the history of the whole industry. If we were to go by the Beckett standard I'm guess they wouldn't be counting game cards but do you think they'd count the Mundichromo cards and/or Megacracks cards? Also I don't want to open up too much of a can of worms but in terms of marking cards on TCDB as an RC what does the population think should count?

Panini doesn't even go by any rule as example you this years Mosaic sets, La Liga Santander versions have alot of the RC stamp on players who have releases in Este or Megacrack 3 seasons ago, I would think Panini could track their own releases, you also have a few in Adrenalyn LaLiga who have releases in Topps Bundesliga stickers and match attax seasons prior, so I have just been using for my own is what is the 1st issues as long as it is in 1st divisions leagues 

Honestly with soccer I do not think RC should exist. Let's use other sports to follow my logic...

Baseball---if first card is from Japan, Korea, etc..another countries top league they don't count as rookie cards. Just the MLB apparently counts

Football--CFL, arena league, XFL, USFL etc...all don't  count for RC only NFL

Hockey--Euro Leagues etc.. don't count only the NHL.

Basketball--Euro and Asian Leagues etc.. don't count only NBA

Why? Because these are considered the highest leagues on the planet. So to apply that to soccer what is the highest league? EPL, La Liga, Ligue1, Bundasliga etc...

So a players first card is from let us say the Polish top division, then he is transferred or loaned to MLS and gets another card, and then signs with Liverpool and gets another card....which is his rookie? Does the MLS one count until the EPL card and the EPL card replaces it?

RC to me is a scam.

For my own sanity, I'll probably use Detfan6897's method since it makes the most sense to me. rmpaq5, I personally think that your post outlines why we don't mark soccer rookie cards on this site. There's so many high level options that it's extremely difficult to formulate a hard rule. Thank you for your opinions.

I agree Detfan6897"s definition makes most sense. I always assumeed that was the way we were doing it here. I don't want to get far from the subject but I believe the bigger issue is what is defined as a sticker and what is defined as a card. some of the older so called stickers have backs with info on them even though they had sticker albums that corresponded with them, and there was no peeling and sticking them to albums. You had to glue them. The example I'm thinking of is the set I'm chasing now.

https://www.tcdb.com/ViewSet.cfm/sid/264396/1977-78-PACOSA-Futbol-en-Accion

https://www.catawiki.com/l/27049055-variant-panini-pacosa-complete-album-futbol-en-accion-1977-78

What do you guys think.

Not just soccer.  Panini ignores the RC logo rules in every sport; college cards, parallels, subsets.

Yea unfortunately, Soccer is a different beast compared to traditional American Sports. Like Lionel Messi for example. He's been at FC Barcelona since he was 13 years old as he was brought up in the FC Barca Youth Academy. As a soccer collector primarily, I can see a trend with both Panini and Topps. The cards in the year where the player dresses and plays for the main team is typically the most sought after cards and what most consider to be the TRUE RC. Even tho as you guys previously mentioned, makers such a Panini will slap a RC logo on just about anything. The rare printed or case hit versions of rookies for their first year on a top 5 league team is best to seek out. (Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Ligue 1, Bundesliga). A good example is the 2019-20 Panini Chronicles Contenders RC Mason Mount. Exremely sought after card especially after winning the UCL this year during the 2020-21 campaign. Hope this helps. 

Yeah, RC's and soccer don't really go together with any set rules. Companies just seem to make it up.