1969 Topps Football Forum

I agree with Billy Kingsley that a shared card should not be considered a player's rookie card. 

But the base vs. insert debate seems more complicated.  If a card comes out in his rookie year, it seems like it should count as a rookie card. But I can see the argument that high profile prospects with a lot of inserts shouldn't have them all count as rookie cards. I guess I lean toward 'yes' because I think the year is more important than the type of card.  

Agreed across the board. IMO the regular base card of the person discussed, plain and simple. No inserts, parallels, multi-player cards, etc. 

NOPE.

Not agreeing or disagreeing because I don't know the correct answer but if you're saying multi-player cards shouldn't be a RC then what about cards like the 1982 Topps Ripken Jr. or 1973 Topps Schmidt/Cey?

I think the difference here (someone correct me if I'm wrong) is that all of those players featured are rookies, except for Cey on the 1973 card. I would say that multi-player cards when they are all considered "rookies" (i.e., their first major release), they should get the RC note. 

I believe that this football card in question features the first appearance of just one of the four players. 

Multi-player cards such as Team Leaders, League Leaders, etc. are not RC cards.

Gotcha, I thought they were lumping in all multi player cards.

I should have also been clearer in my response. I was referring to multi-player rookie cards, not league/team leaders cards and the like.

I'm defnitly guilty of adding to the issue of parallel sets having the RC, but it wasn't out of laziness. I just assumed that if the card has the RC shield on it we were labling it as such. This is further complicated when Topps uses the "Call Up" designator like they did with Yordano Alvarez this year. He's the AL ROY for 2019 (and has many cards already out there), but Topps will slap that RC shield on every card he has in 2020.

I'm not clear on where we draw the line though. We don't like RC on parallels/inserts, but we're ok with RC in the base checklist of 15-20 different sets throughout the year? What about all of the Topps Now/On-Demand/Living Set/Throwback Thursday/etc products?

Interesting turn this thread has taken. Can anyone simply answer the original question?

My two cents. a players RC is his first Regular issue card from a major card company so no inserts are true RC's. But I disagree with Billy on the mul;tiple player on a card is not a RC, a lot of erlier Topps sets had alot multiple player Rc's which I think are still RC's. But other then that personally I don't treat rookie year parralells, insert cards or minor league/ college cards as RC's more like PRC's or first cards. I think that was the standard in the hobby for a long time