Rookie cards dominate the baseball card hobby, but it hasn’t always been that way. During the 1950s and 1960s, they weren’t seen as anything special.  The shift toward valuing rookie cards began slowly in the 1970s.  Early price guides in the 1970s started organizing value in reverse chronological order. Within the pricing algorithm used by the guides, older cards carried more weight, and a player’s earliest card naturally became the most desirable. Then, in 1977, Mark “The Bird” Fidrych became the first-ever rookie card “chase,” and for the first time, a single hot rookie drove sales for an entire product (1977 Topps). Mark Fidrych was a curly-haired pitching phenom for the Detroit Tigers who talked to the baseball, manicured the mound with his hands, and won the 1976 AL Rookie of the Year. Collectors hunted through packs of 1977 Topps specifically to find his card. | Card Ladder Rookies throughout the 1980s, such as Fernando Valenzuela and Dwight Gooden, further added to the rookie card craze.…