Like baseball -
Does anyone know if there is such thing as rookie card demand in Pokemon?
I see a bunch of first appearance rookie cards of popular Pokemon that appear in some unpopular sets.
Do people collect based on rookie cards at all?
Thank you for your input!
Daniel
Iād say that solely looking at how popular base set is compared to how objectively boring/bland the art is and how common the cards are, the rookie effect has to play some part
No. People in this hobby collect more based on type of pokemon in the art/card, rarity of the card, history of the card and so on.
There are also a wide variety in terms of collectors but most just collect what they like. There are also a decent amount of completionist collectors that will try to collect all the chaizard cards, pikachu etc. The rarer the card, the better, typically. So if you have a very rare chaizard or pikachu card then these cards will likely command the highest prices compared to the ārookieā card of this pokemon.
Arceus has like 9 simultaneous rookie cards. This being the first as AR1. And theyāre still dirt cheap for some reason. So nah?
Collectors are vast as are their reasonings. I think the concept of rookie cards is absolutely a thing. I dont even know how some try to deny it. However, that does not always lead to a higher price as rarity does take over at some point. But first appearances will become more and more desired the further we get away from their original printings.
Except this isnāt what OP was asking. They only asked if ārookie card demandā was a thing, which it absolutely, positively is. There is a reason why most rookie set cards command a higher price than the set cards that follow for that particular Pokemon.
Is that always the case? No, but it is the vast majority of the time for set cards.
As someone who was never into sports cards, Iāll be the first to ask:
What is a rookie card?
I looked it up, but it gave me some mumbo jumbo about a card based on an athleteās highest point of competition (whatever that means).
But the way people are talking about Pokemon, makes me think the term refers to āintroā card for a set.
And if thatās the case, wouldnāt it be 1st Edition Base Charizard?
As someone who also was never into sports
I thought a rookie card was the āfirstā main card released when the subject was at a high point of popularity/fame. Like if Expedition was the most popular set in Pokemon, the expedition card would be the rookie even though base and base 2 came before it
It is the card of a player from his rookie (first) season. Now with that there are many different sets and companies and sometimes its not actually the first time he will appear on a card. Although, the distinction of rookie is often consensus of the collectors. For example, Ken Griffey Jrs. Rookie from upper deck is widely considered his rookie card. While he also has Donruss, Topps, etc. Equate it to pokemon and you could use the same example between say Jigglypuff promo or Jungle 1st edition
Every card from 1st Edition Base is essentially the rookie card of the respective pokemon. Neo Genesis, is the same. Neo Discovery has rookies of umbreon and espeon etc.
I was never into sport cards either, but I thought itās their first card basically. So for PokĆ©mon: even though Magneton was in the Base Set, Fossil set, Base Set 2, Team Rocket set, Gym Heroes set, Neo Revelations set, Legendary Collection set, Aquapolis set, AND Skyridge set for the WotC era (jeezā¦ no wonder I had almost as much Magnemite as Pikachu cards as a kid, rofl 
), the 1st edition Base Set version would be the ārookyā card for (English) Magneton cards.
EDIT: I like how all three of us had a different answer. Reading those comments though, Iām most likely not correct with my guessā¦ 
EDIT2: Apparently there isnāt a clear definition of rookie card in sports, based on the COMC blog and Wikipedia. So Iām just as confused as you now that Iāve actually searched for the term, @azulryu.
Greetz,
Quuador
You had it right.
Base Set Magneton is the ārookieā card for Magneton.
Other examples:
Jungle Jolteon
Fossil Dragonite
Neo Genesis Lugia
Neo Discovery Umbreon
Neo Revelation Ho-oh
Not surprisingly, all of those respective cards are also the most popular/valuable for those respective Pokemon. There are very few exceptions to this rule when it comes to set cards (e.g. Neo Revelation Houndoom is more popular/valuable than Neo Discovery Houndoom). The ārookieā card is almost always at the top of the list.
Thank you @nish, @surgenius, and @quuador!
That being the case, promos and prereleases are almost always wanted if we want to think of them in the ranks of what makes a ārookie cardā a rookie card for Pokemon. Thatās not always true though. Prerelease Seadra & Gyarados for example were printed to hell. And the Jigglypuff & Pikachu CoroCoro promos, while wanted, arenāt highly wanted due to the lack of public mainstream knowledge.
This is a long way of saying itās a mix in the end. I think what weighs more is history, knowledge, print, exclusivity, and the public attention.
Itās definitely a mix overall, but when it comes to set cards, itās almost (key word: almost) always a thing. For example, there is a reason why Base Set Blastoise is worth exceedingly more than Team Rocket Dark Blastoise, even though many would argue that Dark Blastoise actually has the superior artwork.
Ah ok. For PokĆ©mon itās clearer than for sports at least, even though the term ārookieā isnāt really used for PokĆ©mon in general. I guess for PokĆ©mon the term rookie is as I mentioned the first card, but one thing I should have added was first set card. If a promo of a PokĆ©mon was released before its first appearance in a set, the set version is still the PokĆ©mon ārookieā card.
I still donāt get a failproof way what a sports ārookieā card is, though. If I read the two links, itās in most cases clear, but in some cases more opinion-based than fact-based apparently, which sounds weird imo.
Greetz,
Quuador
My understanding is that rookie cards are valuable because the player has grown a lot since that particular card was issued - their value comes from that player transforming from the rookie to being at the top of their game.
PokĆ©mon doesnāt really have this concept as the characters are all fictional. Most of the cards which command high values are those which people immediately recognise (which - to counter @dbruze 's Arceus example - Iād argue leans significantly more towards pre-2002 generation 1 and 2 cards than it does any of the later releases).
What weāre seeing now is a shift from what things were like before 2020 and I think nostalgia is a big factor driving people back into the hobby. People arenāt nostalgic for rare promo cards which they didnāt experience as a child (or as a parent) back when they used to enjoy PokĆ©mon.
To use my beloved Pichu as an example: Neo Genesis 1st edition PSA 10 went from $600 to $12,500 (2,083%) and Neo Genesis unlimited PSA 10 had an even more dramatic shift from $50 to $6000 (12,000%) between 2019 and 2020, meanwhile the PSA 10 Sample set Pichu went from $1,500 to $3,500 (233%) and the PSA 10 PokƩmon Fan winner Pichu went from $1,200 to $5,150 (429%) in that same time period - whilst all have seen a marked increase in value, cards which are significantly rarer and were in 2019 more valuable are now the less expensive Pichu cards.
tl;dr: no, I donāt believe there is a rookie card effect in PokĆ©mon, rather there is new money - for lack of a better term - which likely has yet to venture too far out of a known comfort zone.
I would say your data points on pichu just proved that there is a rookie card effect. Where did the new money go? To the first appearance. Therefore that is the rookie card effectā¦
Also, rookie card has zero to do with anything in someones career. Any one who has a card printed has a rookie. Some will only have that card printed. The value does increase depending on the career, but that is because in sports, the premier card is their rookie. Nothing more, nothing less. Dont overthink it.
I donāt think the rookie effect is real in pokemon. Thereās no indicator on the cards that a particular artwork is the āfirst appearanceā of that Pokemon and often it takes a bit of research to even figure it out. The fact that the japanese version will virtually always be the truest rookie card also complicates things.
I would say in all of pokemon, a ārookie premiumā is the exception and not the rule.
But people in Pokemon, like all collectibles, do value āfirstsā. First edition, first print run, base set, protostoise (hah), red/blue graded games, topsun (apparently) etc. etc. But these things are either literally designated as āfirstā or there is just a generally accepted understanding that they are. I just generally donāt see this thinking extend to the actual Pokemon themselves. People can point to the Pokemon in base set that have a clear premium but Iād argue thatās the exception. There are many things that make the entire base set desirable and I think itās the identity of the set that people value, not directly due to the fact that individual cards are ārookiesā. People donāt value 1st ed caterpie because itās the ārookie catepieā but rather because itās part of the larger set. To further hammer this point home, if the base set was really just about ārookiesā then the premium wouldnāt translate to trainer and energy cards but as we all know, they still carry value.
So while the rookie concept is nifty and helps sports people grasp Pokemon slightly better, I think when you really break it down people donāt operate on this rookie mentality. Maybe you could make an argument for base-jungle-fossil but again, I think this has to do with the greater identity of these sets rather any specific order the artwork was released in.
Yeah it can get weird, for eg. a first set appearance card of a player before they became āproā is usually not considered the rookie card even though it may be the first release in a set. Doesnāt mean it canāt carry a premium, though, either, and the market could change its mind about which card is considered the most desired chase cards for a player. Sports seems more aligned with the set popularity (eg. 1990 Leaf, 1991 Bowman) versus the aesthetics of the card itself in making it āiconic,ā whereas PokĆ©mon seems more influenced by the card art or artist. That being said, the cost of a given sets booster box should in theory have a āvalueā premium correlate attached to the cards in that set. 1952 Topps baseball and first ed. Base set ācommonsā carry a premium no matter which card it is due to the set it is from.
Rarity is part of it in both, but a PokĆ©mon can have numerous iconic cards that make them āchaseā cards whereas in sports there tends to be a āmost desirableā player card that is almost always a ārookieā card the hobby decides is THE chase card to get. Now, with the all the artificial scarcity of some modern sports cards in the ultra premium sets, who knows how this will play out. Many include autographs and bits of authentic uniforms in the cards, which is very interesting to me given how the ārare chase cardā bubble burst in sports cards in the 90s. The addition of personalization in the rare sports card chase is an interesting added buffer that may resist what Iād otherwise think a massive bubble trap. Personally, how the PokĆ©mon market is evolving seems much more organic to me in terms of how the āvalueā of cards is developing. While I think ārookiesā are much less emphasized than in sports, at least the price guides of the 90s arenāt dictating to the market what cards are āworth.ā People underestimate what a huge influence those price guides had in showing what a farce the sports card market became during that time.
Big difference is in sports, people collect players for the most part (There are set collectors but far less of them). While in Pokemon people collect sets/āGotta Catch them allā.
I think people are just buying what theyāre familiar with. When I started collecting PokĆ©mon back in 2009/10 I picked Pichu because it was one of my favourite PokĆ©mon from my childhood and my first purchase was the Neo Genesis unlimited card along with the regular and holofoil Expedition cards because those were what I knew and had a connection to. From there I learned about other cards and primarily focussed on artwork I enjoyed rather than any form of rarity. It was only when I started more seriously collecting in 2015/16 that I started going after the rarer (and then more expensive) Pichu cards.
I feel like a lot of people are likely going through this exact same thing right now - why would you buy some stamped Japanese Pichu youāve never seen before when you could buy that Pichu you remember from when you were a kid?
I can only assume the newcomers who stick around will likely start branching out and discovering other cards and moving away from the nostalgia aspect and weāll eventually see prices levelling out again. I assume thatās just natural collection progression, anyhow.
Thanks for clearing up my understanding on what a rookie card is though, like others here Iām not very familiar with the sports card world so itās very much a new term for me. 
