Rookie cards have driven the card industry since the beginning. Its just the way things are. A player’s rookie card is always worth more than his other cards, and it has to do a lot with the way collectors view cards as investments to begin with. Just like comic collectors wanting the first appearance of their favorite heroes, card collectors chase the first year issues.

In football, every product is driven that much more by the current rookie class, mainly because of how involved many of the rookies are from day one. In fact, without a good rookie class driving a particular year, profitability of the products can drop significantly. So, among the many rookie cards that come out during a year, which of them hold the most important spots in the grand scheme of things?

When you really think about it, Upper Deck’s products used to occupy many of the top spots, including number 1 and number 2 with Exquisite and SP Authentic. Now that they are gone, there is a huge question mark as to where the rest of the calendar fits in. Of the remaining products, I compiled my list of the best of the best, in terms ONLY of importance and appeal. Value isnt the end all and be all of a card, and I factored that in when ranking the cards.

1. Topps Chrome Auto– There is no doubt in my mind that the top tier of Topps Chrome RC Autos are some of the most widely collected and best designed cards left on the calendar. They may not carry the secondary market value of some of the other cards out there, but a year with out Topps chrome is a year that many of us would be disappointed with. For each of the people I collect,I HAVE to have their chrome auto, and I plan my year around the product’s release. With SPA no longer licensed and Exquisite on the outside looking in, Chrome is king more than ever.

2. National Treasures Patch Auto – The value of these cards is driven solely by the cost of the box they come from, and that is why they didnt take the top spot. They have been nicely designed in the past, but are rarely thought of as a card that someone MUST collect. They probably will be the most expensive autos on the market for 2010, depending on SPA’s college format success or failure, but they definitely wont be the best looking, and that has always been the problem. Panini tried to create a competitor for Exquisite, and partially succeeded in a few of the four years it has been released. However, last year, it might as well have been a box of Threads, and that greatly affected how many people viewed this set.

3. Playoff Contenders Auto – For the last few years, these cards have been terribly designed, much like the rest of Panini’s calendar. However, due to the fact that the set has been out for the last 15 years and change, collectors chase these cards regardless of how horrid they look. With Panini moving these towards more on card signatures, they have become a lot more collectable for the top guys of the class. On the other hand they have also dropped drastically when it comes to their rank on the calendar for many of the reasons I explained above. In 2007, these cards were some of the more important rookies of the year, but that time has passed in my opinion.

4. SP Authentic Auto Patch – The fact that these cards are as high as they are on this list, even without an NFL license is a testament to how important these cards were to collectors. When you consider that a product that costs a third of what National treasures usually does can yield cards as valuable as they are, it shows what SPA brings to the table. This set used to be at #2 on this list with a bullet, but has moved down a bit because the NCAA license doesnt carry as much weight.

5. Limited Phenoms Patch Auto (tie) – Despite the fact that I hate this year’s previewed design, these cards are usually some of the most popular cards of the year. Limited has also morphed into a top content set for a lot of the collectors that love what Panini brings to the table, and the Phenom patch autos are sought after due to that fact. Last year’s cards were awesome and even commanded more value as a result, and we will see how the design downgrade for this year affects things when the cards hit shelves.

5. Topps Platinum Patch Auto (tie) – I hated Platinum last year because I thought the whole set was designed with some of the laziest bush league tactics. This year, the cards rebounded tremendously, and have easily become some of the more important cards on Topps’ release calendar. Because companies have started to move away from the straight patch auto rookie card, and more towards more of what Panini does with the terrible names for the cards, these cards are welcome on the list. They wont reach SPA’s level until the cards are hard signed, but they are getting to where they are because Topps is using the less is more concept that made SPA a yearly celebration.

Im interested to see where some of the newer products will fair this year, especially without Upper Deck’s design supremacy reigning over them. Its tough to think that a product like Supreme or even Unrivaled will even be in the same zip code as to where Exquisite used to be, and that is where the problem lies. When a loss of a license shakes up the importance list the way it did, one would expect the remaining licensed companies to fight tooth and nail to regain control. Instead we have seen exactly the opposite, ESPECIALLY with Panini, and that is completely shocking to me. Who knows what will happen in the next few years, but I can guarantee that the five sets I listed will continue to be the top dogs as long as sets like Epix and Absolute are presented in the boring ways they have been.