What is the origin of Frank Thomas NNOF?

[slidekellyslide]

Originally Posted by ALR-bishop

You are on a roll Dan

And having fun with cards again thanks to you guys and your error/variation hunt that got me hooked when I was stuck at home. Going to keep this batch of cards separate from the rest of my collection so I can go back as I learn of more error/variations in the 1990 set since this box seems to contain an early run of the cards. Not a single Thomas in the box, but almost all other star cards are present except for Griffey.

[TheAck]

Originally Posted by slidekellyslide

And having fun with cards again thanks to you guys and your error/variation hunt that got me hooked when I was stuck at home. Going to keep this batch of cards separate from the rest of my collection so I can go back as I learn of more error/variations in the 1990 set since this box seems to contain an early run of the cards. Not a single Thomas in the box, but almost all other star cards are present except for Griffey.

lol me too.. spent 2 hours last night going through a box of mix 80s junk looking for 1990 cards. No variations (yet!)

[butchie_t]

I'm gonna have to go through mine now too. I opened a fair amount of wax of 90's. Of course no Frank's NNOFs to speak of at all. But one never knows if something else could be in the mix.


……later that day…..

I got a rock. Zilch, zip, nada. I even have a partial case left over and am not gonna bother gripping and ripping them open because that was what I pulled from to begin with.

[slidekellyslide]

A few weeks back I purchased a 3000 count box of 1990 Topps locally and while perusing I discovered some blackless cards I did not know about. I also found a checklist error card that is missing the "Continued on Checklist 2". When googling the Curt Ford card I found another collector had discovered the same green sheet partial blackless cards that I had found too so they are not a one off.

[lowpopper]

HOF RC NNOF

[ALR-bishop]

The Baines variant was highlighted sometime back in this thread

https://www.net54baseball.com/showth...ght=fleer+1981

[West]

Originally Posted by slidekellyslide

A few weeks back I purchased a 3000 count box of 1990 Topps locally and while perusing I discovered some blackless cards I did not know about. I also found a checklist error card that is missing the "Continued on Checklist 2". When googling the Curt Ford card I found another collector had discovered the same green sheet partial blackless cards that I had found too so they are not a one off.

Correct, this was me, I pulled all of the green sheet errors from a case of 1990 Topps, the case was mailed out on March 8, 1990 I believe so it was definitely not an early print run.
My case contained the Chris Speier error which had the largest missing blackless area. Nice to see you found a clean Curt Ford, mine had a very unfortunate scuff straight out of the pack that I've seen on many cards in the 1990 set.
Another point of interest - the green sheet cards from my case, also bore the distinctive blue plate scratch that was present on the orange sheet containing the Frank Thomas NNOF. I don't believe that to be a coincidence. I've opened up thousands of 1990 Topps packs from all kinds of sources, and I would say there were perhaps 3 other instances of finding noticeable plate scratches, and none came close to being as distinctive as the plate scratches that ran the length of both the orange and green sheets containing the blackless cards.

Speier:


Ford:


Here is how the cards would line up on an uncut sheet:

[slidekellyslide]

My stash of cards did not have a Speier card at all and the Santana, Meadows and Martinez cards were all normal. Now how do we get PSA to recognize these green sheet PB errors?

The Frank Thomas partial black is sitting in Goldin Auctions right now at $8,101 with the juice.

https://goldin.co/item/1990-topps-er...rd-psa-mipr73r

[Cliff Bowman]

At least two cards at the top of the A* Blue Sheet have the print flaw, John Smiley and Dan Pasqua. I suspect more cards on the top row may have also been affected.

[West]

Originally Posted by slidekellyslide

My stash of cards did not have a Speier card at all and the Santana, Meadows and Martinez cards were all normal. Now how do we get PSA to recognize these green sheet PB errors?

The Frank Thomas partial black is sitting in Goldin Auctions right now at $8,101 with the juice.

https://goldin.co/item/1990-topps-er...rd-psa-mipr73r

I pulled all of the green sheet errors, including 3 Speiers and multiple Liebrandts, when I first discovered them in 2016. It was in a lot of 4 boxes and I had several Sammy Sosas that were all normal. Additionally, the Lance Johnson's were normal as well.

I believe the green sheet errors are significant because they occupy nearly the exact same locations on the uncut sheet as the orange sheet errors associated with the NNOF, and the blackless areas, although shaped differently, are sloped in a similar direction on the sheet.

Here they are with the sheets aligned:





If you look at the sheets as they would be fed through the presses, the Speier error is in the same location as the Tapani. Meadows error lines up with Lawton, Alomar=Darrin Jackson and Leibrandt=Franco.

The existence of the Lance Johnson error is an outlier but it has not been found in the same packs as the Speier/Ford/Leibrandt errors so I can't come to a conclusion either way on that. The Ford and Carmelo Martinez errors occupy the locations of the Robin Ventura and the Bob Knepper so those two do not exactly align with the orange sheet but since the general shape is the same, that could have been a simple variation in how the negatives were placed in the plate exposing machine. I'd say there's a decent change they are related but it's nothing you could prove.

I'm also not optimistic PSA would recognize the errors at this time. They haven't done it for the numerous other partial blackless errors from the 1980's Topps sets so I can't see them make an exception unless someone was able to prove it was related to the NNOF errors, which is probably impossible. Also, I have a 1990 Topps Roger Clemens blackless that is missing half is name. A near miss HOFer from the steroid era, with the exact same printing plate flaw that caused the NNOF but they only authenticated it as a normal card, PSA 6.