Only one 1990 Topps Frank Thomas "No Name on Front" rookie card has ever been graded PSA 10.
And that lone gem has only sold once publicly — for $170,400 in December 2022.
Now, for just the second time, it will be offered in the Goldin 100 auction.
When 1990 Topps Baseball released at the start of the MLB season, the Junk Wax Era was in full swing. As a result, stars and rookies from the set were so plentiful that value failed to hold up over time.
One card — or at least, one variation of a card — has stood the test of time.
All thanks to a fluke.
The 1990 Topps Frank Thomas "No Name on Front" rookie is one of the most famous error cards in the hobby, ranking among the likes of the Billy Ripken "F--- Face" and 2006 Topps Alex Gordon as the most memorable in history.
But the story behind it, and the resulting rarity and value, remains shrouded in mystery.
First, the facts: Frank Thomas’ 1990 rookie card was card No. 414 in the 792-card set. Chosen seventh overall by the White Sox in the 1989 Amateur Draft, Thomas was ranked No. 29 on Baseball America’s inaugural Top 100 Prospects list, behind names such as Ben McDonald, John Olerud, Juan Gonzalez and Sandy Alomar.
But as Thomas thrived for the Class AA Birmingham Barons in 1990, recording splits of .323/.487/.581, he would quickly climb the charts — and was named Minor League Player of the Year as a result.
Thomas made his MLB debut for the White Sox in August.
But when the 1990 Topps Baseball set first hit retail shelves during the 1990 season, Thomas was far from the can’t-miss prospect hunted by collectors. Buried in the massive checklist, it wasn’t until the 1993 Beckett Price Guide listed his NNOF error alongside his standard rookie (No. 414A and No. 414B) as $5 and $3.50, respectively, that the error card drew mainstream attention.
What followed was a rise of near-biblical proportions.
The next year, Beckett listed it at $40. By 1995, it was $1,200.
Then, in Dec. 1998, Tuff Stuff Magazine listed 20 of the "highest impact cards of the 1900s." The usuals filled out the top: Mickey Mantle 1952 Topps, Honus Wagner T206, Michael Jordan 1986 Fleer, Ken Griffey Jr. 1989 Upper Deck.
Two spots behind the Wayne Gretzky 1979-80 O-Pee-Chee card and four spots ahead of the 1965 Topps Joe Namath rookie was the Thomas NNOF.
It went from unknown to a veritable trophy card in the span of just five years.
Not on the list? The 1933 Goudey Nap Lajoie or the 1955 Topps Roberto Clemente cards.
This wasn't the first time an error card had caught the attention of card collectors. However, unlike previous examples such as the Ripken, the Dale Murphy and Juan Gonzalez reverse negatives and the Al Leiter Future Star, which were discovered immediately and rose immediately, it took years for Thomas' error to rise.
The reason? Those cards were all mass produced errors and were far easier to spot.
With Thomas, collectors were not only seeking out the top rookie from the set, but a mysterious error card variation worth more than 40% more.
Prices surged, but only for a lucky few, as the NNOF error proved incredibly rare. To date, 29,230 copies of Thomas’ standard rookie card have been graded across PSA, BGS, CGC and SGC, according to GemRate. Only 437 of the NNOF have been graded.
As for how the error came to be in the first place, as with many hobby stories, there are plenty of theories. One is that it was a promotional strategy by Topps, which saw the success of the Ripken card and sought to replicate it. Thomas would have been an odd choice at the time, however, considering he lacked considerable hype at the start of the season.
His 1989 scouting report called him a B-plus prospect, though, to be fair, it did note “Good kid loves to play. Has fun playing.”. Regardless, even if Topps deployed such devious marketing strategies, it seems unlikely Thomas would be the candidate, especially since his minor-league accolades and subsequent MLB debut came after the release of the set.
This is further shown by the card’s back, which makes mention solely of his collegiate career at Auburn (as well as his freshman year spent as a teammate of Bo Jackson on the football team).
Then, there is the more likely, though less fun, explanation of a production issue. One of the most compelling was explored in-depth by bighurthof.com, which attributed the misprint to a “dirty rubber blanket,” writing that a rubber blanket used to transfer ink from a printing plate to the card could have been washed with an improperly prepared solvent. That would result in “a lack of ink transfer from the black plate to the blanket, and therefore from the blanket to the cardstock.”
Regardless of how the card itself made its way into the hands of collectors, it’s now part of hobby history, and one that continues to command top dollar.
The NNOF is far rarer than the standard Thomas rookie. But perhaps even more remarkable is its incredible low gem rate. Only one example — the same which will be sold at Goldin — has received a gem grade from any of the four graders — that’s 0.23%. For the standard rookie, 4,195 cards have achieved gem status for a 14.35% gem rate.
The record sale for a standard Thomas rookie is $1,350, set by a BGS 10 Pristine example in December 2021. A PSA 10 currently trades around $60.
The lowest recorded sale on Card Ladder for a NNOF Thomas in any grade is $351.99, paid for a PSA 5 example in August 2006. Another PSA 5 sold for $6,499.99 earlier this year.
The most recent NNOF sold publicly was a PSA 8 example, which fetched $10,679.88 in September.
Will Stern is a reporter and editor for cllct.