The 1990 Topps Frank Thomas No Name on Front Error

The 1990 Topps #414 Frank Thomas rookie card is easy to find. But one version of that card — with his name missing from the front — is one of the most valuable errors in baseball card history.

What looks like a simple printing mistake is actually the result of plate damage during production. And it didn’t just affect Frank Thomas. Twelve other cards on the same sheet were hit by the same problem.

What Happened During Printing

The error occurred during the printing of Sheet F in the 1990 Topps baseball card run. Something went wrong with the black ink plate.

PSA’s expert Kevin Clark has been researching the NNOF since 1994. He consulted with printing industry professionals to understand how this happened.

“The printing professionals that were consulted concluded it must be a plate issue,” Clark said. “Of the various issues that can cause ink transfer failure, plate damage has been the only solid explanation for the repeatable nature of the blackless error.”

The key word is “repeatable.” An obstruction — like a piece of tape or debris — would have worn away, caused ink pooling, or fallen off quickly. Plate damage, on the other hand, can produce the same error across hundreds of cards.

The damage created a diagonal pattern of missing black ink running from the top-left to the bottom-right of a section of the sheet. Thirteen cards were in that zone.

Where They Were Found

The cards showed up in packs in 1990, mostly in specific regions.

“The majority of firsthand accounts place original distribution in New England, the Eastern seaboard, and the Great Lakes regions,” Clark said. “I’ve heard of multiple pulls in the Carolinas, up and around to Michigan.”

The error cards were only found in regular retail wax packs.

“By all accounts, the error was an early print run variation distributed in regular retail wax,” Clark explained. “I’ve never heard of pulls coming from jumbo wax, cellos, or racks. Most importantly, I’ve heard of zero confirmed finds in Topps factory sets, which was a common rumor when the card was first recognized.”

Value Over Time

The card’s value tells the story of the entire junk wax era. After Beckett acknowledged the error in 1993, prices climbed through the mid-90s boom, peaked in 1998, then crashed alongside the rest of the market.