What is the origin of Frank Thomas NNOF?

[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.

[lowpopper]

OK I read the whole thing.

The CU board reports various Blackless errors coming from "retail wax packs" and "holiday factory sets". The only claims specifically for the orange sheet errors have been from the wax however.

I cracked open a holiday set and I can confirm there are blackless examples in there. I found these:


Sheet A


Sheet B

[swarmee]

You could ask the Tim Wallach hoarder whether or not they have additional "blackless" 1990 cards. He has about 500 of them.
http://timwallach.blogspot.com/2011/02/1990-topps.html

[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.

[steve B]

Originally Posted by 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.

More likely they came just after.

The obstructing object, whatever it was - and I'm thinking it was some tape- was removed from the platemaking machine, but not as well as it should have been, leaving a few bits behind. Not at all a stretch --- Hey, that black plate you made is a mess, we need a new one NOW!
Later on, maybe a lot, maybe a little they realize the new one isn't great, and get another. In between the platemaker has really cleaned the machine, (and probably the whole work area, nobody likes getting in trouble over stray tape)
And the next plate is just fine.

[West]

Pretty good notes and stories here. Many of you have already seen these but I'll throw in some scans to match names to faces. The "partial missing black" run has been mentioned as a "precursor" or perhaps more accurately, a "postscript" to the NNOF error run.

A partial missing black Frank Thomas:


A properly authenticated BGS "partial missing black" owned by Joe:



3 known cards affected by the partial missing black error run (I believe the Magrane could possibly be a 4th):


Notice that the Tapani has a very faint, vertical/slightly diagonal blue line running up the card that passes through the middle of his face. Check out an actual blackless Tapani with the exact same blue line which tells you the printing plates are directly related:


A run of different Marcus Lawton errors pulled from the same case by Joe (RookieWax). L to R, a blackless Lawton from NNOF run, a partially missing black from the related error run, and a partial missing black variation:



A slight correction to the post about green sheet errors only containing border breaks. Here are two (of 4 known) partial blackless Chris Speier that I own:



Other partial blackless from green sheet:




A normal Leibrandt (left) and a Leibrandt with border breaks (right):