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The Wander Franco 2022 Topps 1st Edition Platinum 1/1 has sold.
Sold: April 30, 2022
# of Bids: 44
Final Price: $78,000
Oddly enough, this card features the RC symbol even though Wander Franco achieve the at-bats and days on roster requirements in his 2021 campaign to quality for rookie status that year. In any case, with a holofoil finish, the coveted Platinum 1/1 parallel is the most attractive in the rainbow and is deserving of the highest returns.
To view the current eBay auctions for Wander Franco baseball cards, click here.
Rookie card status has nothing to do with how many at-bats you have. To get a rookie card under current rules, you must make a major league active roster. Each year there is a deadline (which isn’t announced). If you make a roster by that date, your rookie cards are that year. If you make it after, your rookie cards are the following year, and if you get Topps Now cards, they say “Call Up” rather than having an RC logo.
Last year’s deadline was sometime in the first week of June. Franco wasn’t called up until June 20, so he officially was ineligible for rookie cards last year, and didn’t appear in any Topps-branded sets, except for Topps Now “call up” cards. He did get a card in Bowman’s Best, which did not have an RC logo but also, confusingly, was not on a “prospects” design, which arguably could make it a rookie card. That was probably an error on Topps’ part. In any event, though, when he was called up in late June, by current rules that meant his official rookie cards would be the following year.
Hi Brett,
Thanks for the thoughtful comment. According to MLB Regulations, rookie status does in fact have something to do with number of recorded at-bats; read about it here: https://atmlb.com/3LCLU37. To paraphrase: A player shall be considered a rookie if during a previous season or seasons he has
>>>>> (a) exceeded 130 at-bats.
From his debut on June 22, 2021 until the end of the season, Wander Franco logged 281 at-bats, which vastly exceeds the required 130 at-bats required to achieve rookie status. See Wander Franco’s stats here: https://bit.ly/3KDYZIe
>>>>> or (b) accumulated more than 45 days on the active roster of a Major League club.
Wander Franco logged 45 days on the roster by August 14th when Tampa Bay played against Minnesota (a game Tampa Bay lost 12-0). Wander Franco would go on to log another 49 days for a total of 94 days on the Tampa Bay roster in 2021, which well exceeds the required 45 days to qualify for rookie status. See the full 2021 Tampa Bay season schedule here: https://es.pn/3OLqbbv
This information means Wander Franco’s rookie year should’ve been 2021, not 2022, which also means his 2022 cards should actually be second-year cards without RC logos.
As you know, cards of prospects are released throughout the year with early season stuff featuring the 1st Bowman or similar titles and late season releases featuring the RC logo since in the time between the two issues, the player was called up and logged enough experience to achieve RC status. A perfect example of this is Stephen Strasburg’s 2010 Bowman cards: His 2010 Bowman Prospects card (released before his debut) features the 1st Bowman logo, while his 2010 Bowman Draft card (released after his debut) features the RC logo.
>>>>>
But if none of this matters and it all comes down to when the player was called up, and if it was the case that the call-up deadline pre-dated June 22nd, then you are right about why the RC logo didn’t arrive on his cards until 2022. However, even though Topps didn’t produce Wander Franco cards with the RC logo printed on them in 2021, he still logged enough experience via the reasons described above to achieve rookie status that year.
I hope this helps. Thanks again for the comment.
Sold at same price $78K na!