What is the origin of Frank Thomas NNOF?

[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.

[Cliff Bowman]

At least one other card is part of the E* Green Sheet print flaw, Lance Johnson, which is two cards away from the others. It seems Sammy Sosa should have also been affected but I have never seen or heard of one missing part of the border line.

[GoldenAge50s]

Can someone provide a list of all the card #'s affected by the "missing ink" & "white areas" so I can check mine out?

[slidekellyslide]

Cliff, when did you discover those extra missing black cards? Is there a definitive list somewhere of these cards?

[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.

[slidekellyslide]

Good info. Thank you, West.

[jacksoncoupage]

Don't forget about the red-less orange sheet cards. The missing red ink may have only affected one sheet and was likely pulled from the dumpster when you consider the condition of each one that has turned up (I own the Thomas and Wade Boggs AS). The pattern of missing ink is very similar to the sort of haphazard, diagonal swaths of the blackless cards.

[bnorth]

Originally Posted by jacksoncoupage

Don't forget about the red-less orange sheet cards. The missing red ink may have only affected one sheet and was likely pulled from the dumpster when you consider the condition of each one that has turned up (I own the Thomas and Wade Boggs AS). The pattern of missing ink is very similar to the sort of haphazard, diagonal swaths of the blackless cards.

Please post a pic of the Boggs AS.