What is the origin of Frank Thomas NNOF?

[Rich Klein]

The "Tiffany" Sets were all printed in Ireland as were the Traded sets and I think 1-2 other products. So in the 1984-91 realm there are definitely two different printing places (if not more).

Rich

[West]

In Topps' earliest annual report available online (1997), under "Production", they detail there that:
'High-quality paperboard is sent directly to outside printers by the Company's suppliers."

http://getfilings.com/o0000812076-97-000007.html

Annual reports are available for every year since Topps went public in 1987. If someone were to acquire a report for any of the years from 1987-1994, it should detail their production methods in the same manner in which it did in 1997.

[lowpopper]

Ok so does anybody have a DEFINITIVE answer on what packs the error cards made it into?

[ALR-bishop]

If someone had a definitive answer I wonder if they would share it on a sports card chat board or just be out buying those cases, boxes and packs

[lowpopper]

Originally Posted by ALR-bishop

If someone had a definitive answer I wonder if they would share it on a sports card chat board or just be out buying those cases, boxes and packs

I completely agree but the answer is out there somewhere. The cards have been out for 27+ years now and there is only maybe 100-200 of them. I am beginning to think that they may not have come out of packs and could have easily been found in a Topps scrap pile....just a thought.

Moreover, if there was over 100 finds so far, why is there no written account of a pull from a pack/set type of medium?

The Bush-Yale card never came from packs....

If possible, someone please cite an exact documented account of a true NNOF find.

[Rich Klein]

"I completely agree but the answer is out there somewhere. The cards have been out for 27+ years now and there is only maybe 100-200 of them. I am beginning to think that they may not have come out of packs and could have easily been found in a Topps scrap pile....just a thought. "

I will reiterate (And I wish I still had the letters) --we got more than enough letters at Beckett to verify these cards from packs. Now what type of packs or when they were in packs is a different issue but they were truly in packs. I was the E&V guy so I read those letters.

Rich

[West]

Originally Posted by lowpopper

I completely agree but the answer is out there somewhere. The cards have been out for 27+ years now and there is only maybe 100-200 of them. I am beginning to think that they may not have come out of packs and could have easily been found in a Topps scrap pile....just a thought.

Moreover, if there was over 100 finds so far, why is there no written account of a pull from a pack/set type of medium?

The Bush-Yale card never came from packs....

If possible, someone please cite an exact documented account of a true NNOF find.

You really need to take the time to read through the comments on this thread which summarize nearly all of the public knowledge of this card. Your questions above have actually already been answered.

I will echo what Rich said. As I mentioned before, they were found only in wax packs. I have spoken to several people who can attest to this directly, not to mention the person in the CU boards who pulled 5 of them and documented it in that thread. As for population, there are already some 250-275 graded NNOF and I estimated the original print run at 400-1000.

[lowpopper]

I am currently on page 11 of 21 on the long CU thread...wish there was a spark notes version.

[jacksoncoupage]

Originally Posted by lowpopper

I completely agree but the answer is out there somewhere. The cards have been out for 27+ years now and there is only maybe 100-200 of them. I am beginning to think that they may not have come out of packs and could have easily been found in a Topps scrap pile....just a thought.

Moreover, if there was over 100 finds so far, why is there no written account of a pull from a pack/set type of medium?

The Bush-Yale card never came from packs....

If possible, someone please cite an exact documented account of a true NNOF find.

Correct on the Bush Yale card. That was misinfo by Beckett.

The NNOF Thomas (orange sheet blackless) absolutely did NOT come from factory sets. That was an angle by sellers in the mid 90's to move surplus. But as you've seen, there are plenty of other near or partial blackless cards from other sheets to be found in them. I pulled that same Drabek out of one years ago.

These cards have been pulled from packs in the last 10 years, but shy of live videos of a sealed case being broken that contained them, you won't find 100% guaranteed evidence of it. From my memory, a guy on the CU boards named "RookieWax" had pulled at least one at the time of that thread. I believe he is still active on that board. He had the accompanying/connecting ones to go with it. The thread had been derailed because he decided to start offering packs for sale from the batch of retail/grocery display packs he pulled his from.

[jacksoncoupage]

A couple things to keep in mind with these cards.

There exists other degrees of missing black ink on the affected area subjects.

Thomas missing little chips and pieces of his name, Marcus Lawton with small blackless pieces, etc. So there was some type of transition between the original plate/print flaw and correction. Or perhaps the minor missing-black cards were a precursor to the famous ones.

The green sheet subjects are also prone to missing black ink. Chris Gwynn, Roger Salkeld, Jerome Walton are a few I have pulled (from junk boxes/hand collated sets, not sealed product). These, like the orange sheet cards, are not faded or "going blackless" but missing smaller sized areas of the card's black print.

And last year a seller on ebay had found (on ebay) a full, uncut, blackless "dark blue" border sheet. No black ink whatsoever. He had them cut and sold off singles. I believe a Dale Murphy was the big name on that one. He may have a few commons up for sale still.

Oh and this is 100% second-hand information from almost 20 years ago but I was working in card shop and whenever the subject of errors or odd cards stuff came up, one of our regulars would tell a story about how he bought out a local arcade's vending machine stock of cards. He described them as machines that dispensed cards for $0.25 or $0.50 (don't recall qty or exact price). Anyway, he bought these cardboard boxes filled with junk, mostly 1990 Topps. He had sorted through them looking for Thomas and Juan Gonzalez, eventually he came across a Thomas and was "disappointed" to discover that it had most of his name printed on front. He described it as either missing the beginning or ending of his name (FRANK THOM ), I do not recall, but remember trying to visualize it. I've grilled him about this over the years and he claims it was never sold and sits buried in a box in storage.