Barry Bonds – Post War Cards

4 Expensive Baseball Card Printing Errors – Modern Edition

May 9, 2025 by John

I previously shared 6 Expensive Baseball Card Printing Errors with a focus on vintage cards. This piece will focus on the same concept, baseball card printing errors, but with more modern cards. Here are four cards where both an error and corrected version exist in the post-war card market.

1990 Topps #414 Frank Thomas (No Name on Front)

The 1990 Topps #414 Frank Thomas No Name on Front card is one of the most famous cards in the hobby, period. Certainly, it’s one of the most important modern error cards and a must-have for collectors with large bankrolls. Frank was a superstar player when baseball card collecting was near its peak. He’s a Hall of Famer who retired with 521 home runs and a .301 batting average to go with two AL MVP awards. The printing hiccup has been speculated about, and no one has unraveled the mystery as well as the user BunchOBull on the Collector’s Universe message boards.

Essentially a piece of card-stock got in the way of the black printing dye of a few uncut sheets of cards, affecting about ten cards, with Frank Thomas being the most notable.

The No Name on Front version has a PSA population of 289 (up from 207 in 2020) compared to 23,923 (up from 14,278) Name on Front variants. The last sale of a No Name on Front printing error, from PSA’s APR, was $5,049 for a PSA 4 on eBay, with PSA 8s going for well over $10k. Goldin sold a PSA 10 for $170k in December, 2022. In comparison, a PSA 10 of the 1990 Topps #414 Frank Thomas card with his full name printed on the front, is around $65. PSA 8s of the Name on Front variant can be found for under $10, less than grading fees!

1990 Topps #414 Frank Thomas No Name on Front

1990 Topps #414 Frank Thomas Name on Front

1989 Fleer #616 Bill Ripken F**k Face

Fleer didn’t notice that the Bill Ripken card they released had an obscenity written on the bottom of the bat he was holding. It spelled out, “F**k FACE.” After the company became aware of the error, they released subsequent printings with the words obscured. First, they had a blob of what appeared to be Wite-Out, then a pen scribble, and finally a black square. Ripken admitted that he wrote the words on the bat to spot it easily as his batting practice bat. Ripken also believes that Fleer couldn’t have missed the error and suggested that they enhanced it to generate extra publicity.

You can read more about the five Bill Ripken #616 cards in my piece about how to pull the error from wax boxes.

1989 Fleer #616 Bill Ripken Black Box Over Error

1989 Fleer #616 Bill Ripken Black Scribble Over Error

1989 Fleer #616 Bill Ripken Scribbled Out In White

1989 Fleer #616 Bill Ripken Whited Out Vulgarity

1987 Donruss Opening Day #163 Barry Bonds (Johnny Ray)

The Donruss Opening Day set was made to focus on each team’s starters on the opening day of the MLB season. The 1987 Donruss Opening Day Barry Bonds card was initially printed with an image of Johnny Ray but was corrected pretty early in the printing process, making the error quite rare.

3,123 corrected Barry Bonds cards exist with PSA 8s selling for $10 and PSA 10s for ~$250. The Johnny Ray error has a total population of 172 (up from 135 five years ago) with PSA 8 copies selling for ~$800 and PSA 10s going for between $3k and $4k, but I did notice that Fanatics sold one for $8,550 in May, 2023, so they may be way higher, they’re just not that common (PSA 10 pop count of 14).

1987 Donruss Opening Day #163 Barry Bonds Johnny Ray Error

1987 Donruss Opening Day #163 Barry Bonds

1989 Upper Deck #357 Dale Murphy Reverse Negative

While the 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr is the most iconic card in the set, the Dale Murphy may be the most infamous. A version with the image reversed was released. The error is more common in graded form only because the regular variant doesn’t command popularity. Upper Deck said about 2% of the cards have the error. And who knows if it was intentional, to create hype for the set, or not.

959 Reverse Negatives (a nearly doubling of the population in five years from 508) and only 547 corrected (up from 249 in 2020) variants are in the PSA population report. A regular PSA 10 sells for $35 while the reverse negative in GemMt condition sells for closer to $600.

1989 Upper Deck #357 Dale Murphy Reverse Negative

The collectibility and high prices of modern error cards mirror those from earlier in the post-war card era. Collectors continue to value errors that are unique, rare, and frankly, get engagement when shared online.

Happy collecting!

Faux Wood Grain Bordered Sports Cards

March 24, 2025 by John

Love ’em or hate ’em, you definitely have an opinion about the faux wood grain bordered cards; they’re pretty unforgettable. In this article, I’ll run down a few details about five key wood grain framed sports card sets in the hobby and share a few thoughts about them.

1955 Bowman Baseball

The first faux wood-grained border set was Bowman’s final vintage postwar set. I consider it the first bold design choice that Topps or Bowman made with the horizontal color television set style (inspired by the 1950 Drake’s cards). Most real TVs at the time had a wood-grain paneled look. The first 64 cards have a lighter wood grain within the set, and the rest are darker.

The look of these cards is incredibly recognizable, show one to a vintage collector, and they KNOW it’s a 1955 Bowman card. Sports Collector’s Digest once wrote in an interview that “if collectors mention the set they hate from the ’50s the most, the 1955 Bowman set is the one that’s mentioned probably 80-85 percent of the time.” I don’t hate ANY sports card set, but I probably fit more in the group that isn’t a fan of this design than the group who loves it; it’s just a little tacky/cheesy; perhaps I’m just too young to appreciate them!

It’s also weird that the card fronts don’t show the player’s first name, team name, or position. However, Bowman’s last set is still important to the hobby. So, I think the best way to summarize the set is something I once heard during a hobby chat: the cards are ugly but historic. I do applaud Bowman for trying to do something different.

1962 Topps Baseball

The next major release to use a faux wood grain background was Topps’s 1962 baseball set. This time, they made the image look like a sticker peeling away from the wood background, revealing the player’s name, team, and position.

The look of the wood seems a bit more “elegant” this time. Some say they are inspired by the 1955 Bowman design, but Topps did the design in a way that works a lot better to me. The vertical orientation, the move away from the television screen, and additional player information on the front make a complete design. It’s still not the most attractive design Topps has made, but it’s nicer than the 1955 Bowman set.

From a collector’s perspective, the edges in this set show chipping, so, just like the 1955 Bowmans, the cards are tough to find in better condition.

1966 Topps Football and Hockey

The 1966 Topps Hockey and Football sets have the same color TV-based design of a player’s photo within a faux wood grain border with the player’s name, position, and team printed along the bottom of the horizontally aligned card. They’re just as polarizing as the other sets I mentioned.

The hockey card images are imposed in front of a game crowd, which I think looks pretty cool. The football cards seem to have either the background from where the photo was taken (likely a practice field and usually of the sky) or a pure red or yellow background.

Color TV was still new in 1966, so the cards were probably pretty appropriate for the time. Also, the hockey cards have a TV shape on the back (white text on a black background shipped like an oval TV).

1987 Topps Baseball

I think the 1987 Topps Baseball set pulled off the wood grain border the best. The frame looks like a baseball bat and fits the era well. Therefore, it’s one of the most recognizable sets from the 1980s.

The box around the player’s name, the black texted Topps logo, and the team logo in the upper circle look great from a design perspective. It’s the cleanest of these designs, so I’m a big fan.

As I said in the intro, these wood grain-bordered cards definitely elicit a reaction and opinion from collectors, so I’d love to hear what you think about them in the comments.

Happy collecting!

PS: In writing this article, I considered including the 1958 Hires Root Beer set but wanted to concentrate on major releases.

2001 Barry Bonds Full Home Run Ticket Run

June 21, 2024 by John

Bonds shattered the single-season HR mark with 73 in 2001, and someone managed to put together a complete run of 61 full tickets from each of his home run games.

The lot was available for sale in Mastro’s April 2002 catalog, and each was described as being in NM/MT to MT condition.

The keys were home run #60 on September 6 vs. the Diamondbacks, #70, which tied Mark McGwire for the single-season home run mark on October 4 vs. the Astros, #’s 71-72 when he set the new single-season home run mark on October 5 vs. the Dodgers, #73 when he established the new record on the last game of the season on October 6 vs. the Dodgers, and #6 on April 17 vs. the Dodgers which was his 500th career home run.

A lot of the tickets were obtained from season ticket holders by a collector who started the set on the first game of the season.