<< <i>I remember hearing about them in 1991 since that was the last year I attended shows regularly. >>
This is an absolutely epic thread, just awesome.
I stopped collecting, for the most part, by the end of 1991. My group and LCS all used a publication called Current Card Prices. CCP definitely had the NNOF error denoted as such and I seem to recall their listed price for it at $2,000.
Conundrum - Loving my unopened baseball card collection....but really like ripping too
The seller said he bought it at the National last week; he argued that it would have been labeled a "trading card" if it were fake, but seems open to the prospect that it's fake now. I hesitate to say anything else because I don't want this thread to get locked.
I wanted to bump this thread back up as I find the NNOF and the related errors quite fascinating.
I'm curious, does anyone have anything new to report? Anyone busted any cases lately? I've only gone through one full case and probably a dozen boxes in the last few years and obviously have found nothing. Opening '90 Topps gets boring quickly. I bought a few partial blackless cards awhile back, but have not seen any of the full blackless errors or new NNOFs pop up.
Sure is...seems to have died down over the last two years. I'm still trying to track down these errors if anyone is selling them, hit me up on PM. Also would love to hear if anyone has simply located more of them, and where they were found.
I found a card with similar issues from the 1978 Topps Football set. It is missing the names which are written in black but seems to have black ink elsewhere on the card. Has anyone heard of this type of error in other Topps sets, besides the 1982 Topps Baseball Blackless?
I am buying and trading for RC's of Wilt Chamberlain, George Mikan, Bill Russell, Oscar Robertson, Jerry West, and Bob Cousy! Don't waste your time and fees listing on ebay before getting in touch me by PM or at gregmo32@aol.com !
Originally posted by: gregmo32 I found a card with similar issues from the 1978 Topps Football set. It is missing the names which are written in black but seems to have black ink elsewhere on the card. Has anyone heard of this type of error in other Topps sets, besides the 1982 Topps Baseball Blackless?
The person who runs this blog is a member here and one of the most knowledgeable people I know on the subject.
The '82 and '90 errors are the most well known of blackless errors but if you do any in depth reading of the above blog you will get a feel for the true breadth of printing errors from the junk wax era.
Here are some the partial blackless cards I found recently. The Lawton, Hart and Morris all came from the same source, though I do not think that person was lucky enough to have a NNOF in that find. I found the Thomas scouring the web and COMC.
The cards are not very impressive, but it wasn't for lack of searching haha.
I am buying and trading for RC's of Wilt Chamberlain, George Mikan, Bill Russell, Oscar Robertson, Jerry West, and Bob Cousy! Don't waste your time and fees listing on ebay before getting in touch me by PM or at gregmo32@aol.com !
Originally posted by: gregmo32 I found a card with similar issues from the 1978 Topps Football set. It is missing the names which are written in black but seems to have black ink elsewhere on the card. Has anyone heard of this type of error in other Topps sets, besides the 1982 Topps Baseball Blackless?
I have found several interesting one off printing errors in several sets but the only example of a blackless area similar to 1990 Topps (cards with a blackless area where identical copies can be found) occur in 1985 Topps baseball.
Originally posted by: craig44 That is an interesting nnof. Almost a transitional example.
It would be very cool to find a transitional NNOF but they are unlikely to exist. Rookiewax had several cards similar to the above Thomas in his case that a NNOF came out of. They were graded as a 1990 Topps "partial blackless" Thomas by Beckett.
Ross (BunchofBull) speculated - and correct me if I'm wrong in the technical aspects - that the Lawton and Thomas "partial blackless" cards pictured above were initial printing flaws caused by a dirty rubber blanket on the orange sheet. This caused an employee to clean the affected blanket with a solvent in a swipe pattern (as you see in the blackless collage highlighting the affected cards). The solvent was possibly not effectively cleaned afterwards which created a surface that ink would not adhere to. This compounded the error and created multiple cards with swaths of black ink missing. The Thomas, Russell and Biggio, as well as the less obvious errors, made it past quality control and the rest is history. Ross put quite a lot of time and effort into researching this and so i would consider this the most likely scenario.
What I find interesting is that although the errors all happened at the exact same time during the printing process, the assembly line functioned in such a manner that cards from multiple operating presses were packaged into wax boxes and cases. Due to the variables involved in mass manufacturing of baseball cards, different cases yield different results in terms of where the NNOFs and blackless errors lie. As we saw with Rookiewax's pull, some packs yielded partial blackless Thomas, some packs yielded NNOFs, and others yielded perfectly normal cards.
To add to this, I met a guy a year ago who broke ten cases to find one single NNOF. This was the latest chronological pull by a hobbyist of a NNOF since Rookiewax that I have heard of. This same person also found 5-6 of the blackless errors. This is out of 10 cases. (Remember that Rookiewax pulled 3 NNOFs from his first case and several more from a later find of 1.5 wax boxes a few years later.) That tells me that the gentleman who found this latest NNOF possibly had cases from a later print run where quality control employees were aware of the error and actively removing affected sheets and/or individual cards from the packaging process.
Originally posted by: gregmo32 I found a card with similar issues from the 1978 Topps Football set. It is missing the names which are written in black but seems to have black ink elsewhere on the card. Has anyone heard of this type of error in other Topps sets, besides the 1982 Topps Baseball Blackless?
1980T FB - Beasley Reese (sp?) No position on front
First of all, only one feedback as seller. That doesn't matter all that much but it does get my attention.
Main factors that I am looking at: - The swath of faded ink on Frank's arm. I've never seen one that low before. - The black border breaks on the left side are clean and sharp. All the NNOFs I've seen have had border breaks on the left side that sort of fade out. - Never seen a NNOF with top/bottom centering that good. Better than the Dmitri Young version for sure. -The red border on the left side of the card gets lighter in the affected area where the border break starts.
Compare to this image:
I don't know, but something seems off with this one. Just wanted to post this in case some were thinking of buying.
Oh and on the graded NNOF, look at the difference in shade on the left shoe and stirrup where the affected ink swath goes through it. The very bottom of the stirrup turns dark where the affected ink swath end. No shade differences exist on the Ebay card in question.
A visual for those unfamiliar with the ink swath pattern:
Just checked it out. I don't like it either. A tell tale for me is in the name box, there should be a very tiny portion of the f in frank present. There is none on this example. I think it is a fake.
It is a fake...and one I really want a copy of. The biggest tell is the angle of the blackless swatch. I always look at the elbow because it comes much too low. They tend to be ever-so-slightly undersized as well.
Yes, I also noticed the absence of the beginning of the "F" in Frank. However I have seen a few NNOFs with just a miniscule amount of the F so I didn't mention it because it is plausible for it to be legit without much presence of an "F". That said, I do believe that the amount of "F" present on each NNOF likely depends on the centering of the individual card, so on a well centered version such as this, there would likely be some part of the "F" present. Regardless, there are enough warning flags that I would completely stay away from this one unless the buyer could guarantee full money back after PSA grading.
I agree with everything everyone has pointed out. Just adding a few more things.
- The "R" on topps logo on the front isn't clear....at least to me. - The dots on the outside of the card don't look right either.....different pattern and faded - The "F" part of his name is inside the faded area.......not outside - There is a fine black line between his leg and the grass on the leg that is on the ground
There are to many fine details to list. I'm comparing to one I have in hand. I do like the wax stain on the back his card though!
This is a great thread for sure. I was rereading the Nov 1995 Beckett and noticed this reader's comments as he points out too that one of the adjacent cards to the Thomas should also be missing some of the black ink. Can't believe it took another 14 years for someone else to pick up on it as well and investigate further.
That is some interesting information. I like reading the early articles about the nnof. It would be a good addition to the thread if we could get together all the hobby publication articles about it and have them scanned onto this thread so everyone could have access. I may have a few hanging around.
Does anyone know what the first article published about the nnof was?
was just looking at this thread again and the concerns with the possible fake Thomas NNOF mentioned above... take a close look on page 7 of this thread at the Beckett 1994 story example and see if the black lines near Thomas' left elbow aren't strikingly similar to those on the so-called fake... the lines on the 'graded' examples here tend to stop at/or just below the sleeve, but the so-called fake and the beckett version seem to run well past the end of the sleeve and have a narrower gap between the top and bottom black lines... and, the bottom black lines end sooner (left to right) than those of the graded cards which appear to run farther under the right shoe (which explains the missing part of the F)... If this was caused by a "liquid" issue of some sort, there could be variations of the NNOF based on the spread of the liquid... this would also mean that adjoining cards could have varying degrees of black loss, too... just a thought... I'm not saying the 'fake' is definitely real.... but...
@aberdeentradingco said:
was just looking at this thread again and the concerns with the possible fake Thomas NNOF mentioned above... take a close look on page 7 of this thread at the Beckett 1994 story example and see if the black lines near Thomas' left elbow aren't strikingly similar to those on the so-called fake... the lines on the 'graded' examples here tend to stop at/or just below the sleeve, but the so-called fake and the beckett version seem to run well past the end of the sleeve and have a narrower gap between the top and bottom black lines... and, the bottom black lines end sooner (left to right) than those of the graded cards which appear to run farther under the right shoe (which explains the missing part of the F)... If this was caused by a "liquid" issue of some sort, there could be variations of the NNOF based on the spread of the liquid... this would also mean that adjoining cards could have varying degrees of black loss, too... just a thought... I'm not saying the 'fake' is definitely real.... but...
That was something we all pondered for awhile too, but the printing process doesn't really support a morphing error, more of an initial error that had an attempt to be corrected, but it only made it worse. A physical barrier like a liquid would have allowed black ink to pool around the edges of the barrier, creating a completely different, though cool, error.
Here's a collection of thoughts and probabilities I wrote after consulting people in the know:
It's too bad that we can't test these theories out with actual printing machines and try to replicate the three scenarios to see results. I can't imagine it would be that expensive and the biggest hurdle would require someone's time and material. Seems like the logical next step.
It's certainly feasible to set up. I think anecdotally a lot of professionals have experienced even more scenarios that we haven't even thought up yet. Of the three, every printer I spoke to came to the same final conclusion...admittedly, If I had my wish, it would have been a black plate error and the plate exists somewhere in the Topps Vault archives. Maybe more alluring to me would be an uncut sheet tucked away in the vault somewhere. The "what-ifs" keep it fun though, so I don't know if I want to have the factual answer.
Comments
<< <i>I remember hearing about them in 1991 since that was the last year I attended shows regularly. >>
This is an absolutely epic thread, just awesome.
I stopped collecting, for the most part, by the end of 1991. My group and LCS all used a publication called Current Card Prices. CCP definitely had the NNOF error denoted as such and I seem to recall their listed price for it at $2,000.
Pretty sure everyone knows they did not come out of packs, even the original thread poster...
Looking for 1970 MLB Photostamps
- uncut
Positive Transactions - tennesseebanker, Ahmanfan, Donruss, Colebear, CDsNuts, rbdjr1, Downtown1974, yankeeno7, drewsef, mnolan, mrbud60, msassin, RipublicaninMass, AkbarClone, rustywilly, lsutigers1973, julen23 and nam812, plus many others...
">link
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
"1990 TOPPS 414 FRANK THOMAS NAME ON FRONT"
http://www.psacard.com/DNACert/83787308
So.....ya. I wouldn't buy that card unless it was in a RED flip and actually looked authentic, lol.
This remains one of my all-time favorite threads on this forum!
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
Bowman Baseball -1948-1955
Fleer Baseball-1923, 1959-2007
Al
I'm curious, does anyone have anything new to report? Anyone busted any cases lately? I've only gone through one full case and probably a dozen boxes in the last few years and obviously have found nothing. Opening '90 Topps gets boring quickly. I bought a few partial blackless cards awhile back, but have not seen any of the full blackless errors or new NNOFs pop up.
Has anyone heard of this type of error in other Topps sets, besides the 1982 Topps Baseball Blackless?
Don't waste your time and fees listing on ebay before getting in touch me by PM or at gregmo32@aol.com !
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
I found a card with similar issues from the 1978 Topps Football set. It is missing the names which are written in black but seems to have black ink elsewhere on the card.
Has anyone heard of this type of error in other Topps sets, besides the 1982 Topps Baseball Blackless?
The person who runs this blog is a member here and one of the most knowledgeable people I know on the subject.
https://junkwaxgems.wordpress.com/
The '82 and '90 errors are the most well known of blackless errors but if you do any in depth reading of the above blog you will get a feel for the true breadth of printing errors from the junk wax era.
The cards are not very impressive, but it wasn't for lack of searching haha.
Don't waste your time and fees listing on ebay before getting in touch me by PM or at gregmo32@aol.com !
Bowman Baseball -1948-1955
Fleer Baseball-1923, 1959-2007
Al
I found a card with similar issues from the 1978 Topps Football set. It is missing the names which are written in black but seems to have black ink elsewhere on the card.
Has anyone heard of this type of error in other Topps sets, besides the 1982 Topps Baseball Blackless?
I have found several interesting one off printing errors in several sets but the only example of a blackless area similar to 1990 Topps (cards with a blackless area where identical copies can be found) occur in 1985 Topps baseball.
1985 Topps Blackless
saucywombat@hotmail.com
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
That is an interesting nnof. Almost a transitional example.
It would be very cool to find a transitional NNOF but they are unlikely to exist. Rookiewax had several cards similar to the above Thomas in his case that a NNOF came out of. They were graded as a 1990 Topps "partial blackless" Thomas by Beckett.
Ross (BunchofBull) speculated - and correct me if I'm wrong in the technical aspects - that the Lawton and Thomas "partial blackless" cards pictured above were initial printing flaws caused by a dirty rubber blanket on the orange sheet. This caused an employee to clean the affected blanket with a solvent in a swipe pattern (as you see in the blackless collage highlighting the affected cards). The solvent was possibly not effectively cleaned afterwards which created a surface that ink would not adhere to. This compounded the error and created multiple cards with swaths of black ink missing. The Thomas, Russell and Biggio, as well as the less obvious errors, made it past quality control and the rest is history. Ross put quite a lot of time and effort into researching this and so i would consider this the most likely scenario.
What I find interesting is that although the errors all happened at the exact same time during the printing process, the assembly line functioned in such a manner that cards from multiple operating presses were packaged into wax boxes and cases. Due to the variables involved in mass manufacturing of baseball cards, different cases yield different results in terms of where the NNOFs and blackless errors lie. As we saw with Rookiewax's pull, some packs yielded partial blackless Thomas, some packs yielded NNOFs, and others yielded perfectly normal cards.
To add to this, I met a guy a year ago who broke ten cases to find one single NNOF. This was the latest chronological pull by a hobbyist of a NNOF since Rookiewax that I have heard of. This same person also found 5-6 of the blackless errors. This is out of 10 cases. (Remember that Rookiewax pulled 3 NNOFs from his first case and several more from a later find of 1.5 wax boxes a few years later.) That tells me that the gentleman who found this latest NNOF possibly had cases from a later print run where quality control employees were aware of the error and actively removing affected sheets and/or individual cards from the packaging process.
I found a card with similar issues from the 1978 Topps Football set. It is missing the names which are written in black but seems to have black ink elsewhere on the card.
Has anyone heard of this type of error in other Topps sets, besides the 1982 Topps Baseball Blackless?
1980T FB - Beasley Reese (sp?) No position on front
Bowman Baseball -1948-1955
Fleer Baseball-1923, 1959-2007
Al
http://www.ebay.com/itm/262599792551
edit- link here
First of all, only one feedback as seller. That doesn't matter all that much but it does get my attention.
Main factors that I am looking at:
- The swath of faded ink on Frank's arm. I've never seen one that low before.
- The black border breaks on the left side are clean and sharp. All the NNOFs I've seen have had border breaks on the left side that sort of fade out.
- Never seen a NNOF with top/bottom centering that good. Better than the Dmitri Young version for sure.
-The red border on the left side of the card gets lighter in the affected area where the border break starts.
Compare to this image:
I don't know, but something seems off with this one. Just wanted to post this in case some were thinking of buying.
A visual for those unfamiliar with the ink swath pattern:
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
- The "R" on topps logo on the front isn't clear....at least to me.
- The dots on the outside of the card don't look right either.....different pattern and faded
- The "F" part of his name is inside the faded area.......not outside
- There is a fine black line between his leg and the grass on the leg that is on the ground
There are to many fine details to list. I'm comparing to one I have in hand. I do like the wax stain on the back his card though!
That is some interesting information. I like reading the early articles about the nnof. It would be a good addition to the thread if we could get together all the hobby publication articles about it and have them scanned onto this thread so everyone could have access. I may have a few hanging around.
Does anyone know what the first article published about the nnof was?
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
my oxymoronish contribution to this thread.
and one of my top 5 hof signed rc's.
(and cant even be used in that registry set)
Nice card. I always thought it would be cool to have frank sign a nnof then print his name in the blank blue box.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
aha!
i will probably have to get that done now.
thanks!
in invisible ink would probably be taking it too far?
I think invisible ink is just perfect!
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
was just looking at this thread again and the concerns with the possible fake Thomas NNOF mentioned above... take a close look on page 7 of this thread at the Beckett 1994 story example and see if the black lines near Thomas' left elbow aren't strikingly similar to those on the so-called fake... the lines on the 'graded' examples here tend to stop at/or just below the sleeve, but the so-called fake and the beckett version seem to run well past the end of the sleeve and have a narrower gap between the top and bottom black lines... and, the bottom black lines end sooner (left to right) than those of the graded cards which appear to run farther under the right shoe (which explains the missing part of the F)... If this was caused by a "liquid" issue of some sort, there could be variations of the NNOF based on the spread of the liquid... this would also mean that adjoining cards could have varying degrees of black loss, too... just a thought... I'm not saying the 'fake' is definitely real.... but...
correction to above post---Thomas's ****Right**** elbow not left (elbow at left side of card as we look at it)
Looking to get this reholdered what services level do I have to send it in on?
James
That was something we all pondered for awhile too, but the printing process doesn't really support a morphing error, more of an initial error that had an attempt to be corrected, but it only made it worse. A physical barrier like a liquid would have allowed black ink to pool around the edges of the barrier, creating a completely different, though cool, error.
Here's a collection of thoughts and probabilities I wrote after consulting people in the know:
bighurthof.com/1990-topps-variations
It's certainly feasible to set up. I think anecdotally a lot of professionals have experienced even more scenarios that we haven't even thought up yet. Of the three, every printer I spoke to came to the same final conclusion...admittedly, If I had my wish, it would have been a black plate error and the plate exists somewhere in the Topps Vault archives. Maybe more alluring to me would be an uncut sheet tucked away in the vault somewhere. The "what-ifs" keep it fun though, so I don't know if I want to have the factual answer.