What is the origin of Frank Thomas NNOF?

[steve B]

Originally Posted by bnorth

Cool card. I will say whoever you quoted in your eBay listing on what happened is wrong. There is absolutely no way what they said is really what happened IMHO.

I agree about the dry ink cartridges thing. Simply not the way high production printing was done. Not even low production printing.

I do think the card is cool, and that it's probably an actual NNOF. Why the shadow of the name is there is a bit of a mystery, but I can think of a few reasons why.

The normal missing black is from a poorly made plate where part of it was obscured while it was being exposed. Sloppy work, and if someone said the platemaker was asleep I might give them that..

Adding the name to a new blue plate by mistake is possible. It's not really likely, but neither is letting a huge bit of tape or something get into the plate exposing machine. (Both are so very Topps though)

"Guys! The blue block with Frank Thomas's name doesn't have a name!"
"Ok, I made a new blue plate and fixed it"
"No! not the blue one, the black plate!"
"But you said blue.... "
"The block is blue, the name is black"

Now there should be "normal" Thomas's with the blue name showing under the black if the registration isn't right. I haven't seen one of those either. But if they messed up and "fixed" the wrong plate there should be some.