Valuable Baseball Cards From the 90s: Prices and Errors

Valuable baseball cards from the 90s fall into three groups: printing errors, short-printed or limited cards, and a handful of star rookies in top grade. The rest of the decade's base cards were printed in such numbers that most sell for a few dollars raw. The priced cards below come from sources we opened; each price names its source and the grade.

• 1990 Topps #414 Frank Thomas, No Name on Front error: the only PSA 10 of 306 graded sold for $183,000 in February 2026; PSA 9s sell for $15,000 to $20,000 (Old Sports Cards).
• 1990 Topps #USA1 George Bush: about 100 printed, showing the president in his Yale uniform; $16,500 in PSA 8 (Old Sports Cards).
• 1993 Topps #98 Derek Jeter rookie: $515 in PSA 10; the Rockies Inaugural parallel $3,125, Topps Micro $2,746, Gold $2,000, Marlins Inaugural $1,750 (Collectibles On SI, July 16, 2026).
• 1990 Topps #336 Ken Griffey Jr.: $1,200–$1,225 in PSA 10; only 631 PSA 10s among 19,250 graded (3.3%) (Old Sports Cards).
• 1990 Topps #414 Frank Thomas, partial blackless error: $1,100 in PSA 9 (Old Sports Cards).
• 1992 Bowman #302 Mariano Rivera rookie: Gem Mint 10s were selling for about $600 on eBay (Postwar Cards, Nov. 21, 2024).
• 1993 Topps Black Gold #33 Ken Griffey Jr.: $504 in PSA 10 (SI, July 16, 2026).
• 1993 SP #279 Derek Jeter rookie: $135 raw, $199 in grade 9, $450 in PSA 10 (SportsCardsPro, Sept. 25, 2026).
• 1993 Score #59 Nolan Ryan: $175 in PSA 10 (Old Sports Cards).
• 1990 Topps #414 Frank Thomas rookie, regular: $145–$155 in PSA 10 (Old Sports Cards).
• 1990 Fleer #513 Ken Griffey Jr.: $100–$110 in PSA 10 (Old Sports Cards).

These cards come up again and again in the top lists we read, but those pages give no current price we could verify, so we list them without one:

• 1990 Leaf #300 Frank Thomas rookie and 1990 Leaf #220 Sammy Sosa rookie (Cardboard Connection; Postwar Cards).
• 1990 Score #697 Bo Jackson, which Postwar Cards singles out for its photo (Postwar Cards).
• 1991 Upper Deck #SP1 Michael Jordan baseball card (Postwar Cards).
• 1991 Stadium Club #388 Jeff Bagwell rookie (Cardboard Connection).
• 1992 Bowman rookies: #461 Mike Piazza, #532 Manny Ramirez, #127 Carlos Delgado (Cardboard Connection).
• 1992 Fleer Update #92 Mike Piazza rookie and 1992 Topps Traded #39T Nomar Garciaparra (Cardboard Connection).
• 1993 Bowman #511, Pinnacle #457 and Select #360 Derek Jeter rookies (Cardboard Connection).
• 1994 SP #15 Alex Rodriguez, foil die-cut (Postwar Cards).
• 1995 Pinnacle #128 Ken Griffey Jr., with a bubble-gum bubble variant (Postwar Cards).

The 1991 Topps set has its own page: 1991 Topps baseball cards most valuable.

1990 Topps is a 792-card set, and PSA has graded 101,940 of its cards, 17.1% of them PSA 10 (Old Sports Cards). Check your cards for these:

• Frank Thomas #414 with a blank nameplate: the No Name on Front error. The front where his name should be is empty.
• Frank Thomas #414 with a break in the black trim near the nameplate: the partial blackless error, rarer than No Name according to Old Sports Cards but priced lower ($1,100 in PSA 9).
• Ken Griffey Jr. #336: the card with the Topps All-Star Rookie symbol; a PSA 10 is worth about eight times a regular Thomas rookie in PSA 10, and only 3.3% of graded copies reach a 10.
• George Bush #USA1: if you have it, it is one of about 100.

Thomas #414 is the most-graded card in the set (25.2% of all 1990 Topps grades), so a regular copy is common; the value is in the errors.

Card companies printed so many cards in the late 1980s and early 1990s that collectors call it the junk wax era; Wax Pack Gods describes 1990 Fleer as one of the most overproduced sets of that decade. Supply is the reason. The share of PSA-graded cards that earned a 10 is also high for these sets: 31.1% for 1990 Fleer, 19.1% for 1993 Topps and 17.1% for 1990 Topps (Old Sports Cards). So even a PSA 10 is not rare for most players. Price rises only where supply is small: errors fixed during the print run, parallels, inserts, and star rookies that rarely grade a 10, such as the 1990 Topps Griffey (3.3%).

• Find the exact card: year, brand and number on the back. The same player often has five or more cards in one year.
• Check for a version: Gold or Inaugural parallels in 1993 Topps, Black Gold inserts, errors like the Thomas nameplate.
• Price the grade you have: a PSA 10 value is not the value of a raw card. The 1993 Topps Black Gold Griffey is $504 in PSA 10 and $36 in PSA 9 (SI, July 16, 2026).
• Use sold prices: asking prices on marketplaces are often far above what cards sell for.

StarLens identifies the card from a photo so you can look up the right set and number. For a full price walk-through see the baseball card price guide.

Research and drafting for this page were assisted by AI and checked line by line against the sources listed below. Every price names its source and the date we read it. A video in the top results and SportsCardsPro's set pages could not be read automatically on Sept. 25, 2026. Where that left a gap, the page says so instead of guessing. Prices change; treat them as a reference, not an offer. If you find an error, tell us and we will correct it.