Legends of Association Football Rookie Series

The information provided is based upon research conducted on the subject; however, football cards and their issued dates should be considered vast evolving subject matter. I will update to the best of my knowledge as new information comes available but no one source should be considered definitive. If you have comments or corrections, please contact me and I will do my best to provide the most accurate information available.

This is the inaugural post in a series I will call the Legends of Association Football Rookie Series. As I have mentioned in previous posts, differences in approaches to collecting exist between North American and British Collectors.  I hypothesize that the differences may be reflective of the individualistic North American psyche, but there seems to be more emphasis for the North American collector on cards of players, whereas in Britain there is more emphasis on collecting sets or teams especially scarce or large sets.

In general, the North American collector prizes above all else the rookie card. Many British collectors think this is a bunch of nonsense and value should be derived from scarcity and you know what, if you think about it, they have a good point. But just like you can’t choose your family, you can’t choose where you come from. I come from Canada and so the concept of valuing rookie cards has been ingrained in my mind since I started collecting and I am too old and inflexible to change now.  Besides collecting rookies can be fun. There is something magical in a card of a player is just starting out on his career, before they have scored the goals and set the records.

However, because British vintage football card collectors often don’t hold rookie cards in the same regard as North American collectors and because of the plethora of sets available, it is often difficult to determine which card is actually a player’s true rookie card.  It’s worth mentioning that I am not advocating that a certain football/soccer rookie card necessarily equates to the most valuable or desirable card. I am merely trying to identify the first card that was issued for a player.

100 Legends of Football League
In 1999, to commemorate the 100th season of The Football League, the Football League issued a list of 100 legendary footballers who had appeared in the Football League and/or the League Cup over the last century. Using this list as a guide and the general principles of determining a rookie card , this series will work through the list of vintage association football to try to identify the true rookie card from each player.  

Each post will identify three rookie cards from legendary players of Football League, starting with the oldest cards and working forwards. 

Each post of the prewar players will also provide a short profile of why the player is or at least should be considered a legend of the game. Mostly, I will use players from the Football Legends list; however, it is, not surprisingly, a little bit modern heavy so I will add some pre-war players that ought to be considered greats of their day that perhaps time has forgotten.

I decided to do this series to assist collectors who were conducting the same research trying to determine which cards are the first issue profiling a player. The cards on the list are not necessarily the most sought-after, valuable or even interesting, but meet the definition of a rookie card.

The series will be a challenging task and I am sure that mistakes will be made along the way.  I encourage collectors to comment, debate and send in new information.