This is part 17 of an ongoing series. To see the rest of this series, click here.

Before there was Albert Pujols, there was the Big Hurt Frank Thomas. Laugh all you want, but when Thomas was healthy, there was no better first baseman in the game. He was the game’s premier power hitter, and arguably the greatest hitter (in terms of average) of the early and mid 1990s. Every time he stepped to the plate, he was fixin’ to put a hurtin’ on the other team. His on-field success lead to extreme hobby status and this 1990 Leaf card was THE card to have. In an era where card were produced in the millions (or close to that anyway) the Leaf product of 1990 was considered the elite brand due to its “limited” nature. The Thomas card rivaled the 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr. as the best active player rookie card to own at the time; each was being sold in excess of $75 at the time. To put that into perspective, boxes of basic cards like Topps and Donruss were still being sold for about $18 per. Thomas’ career was marred by injury starting in the late 1990s and his hobby status began declining as a result. (it should be noted that Thomas still has plenty of hardcore collectors willing to pay a pretty penny for the extremely rare cards) His Leaf rookie began showing up for discount prices; Gem Mint copies like the one shown here can be had for a little more than $20. That’s a hell of a collectible at a great price if you ask me.

This entry was posted on December 18, 2009 at 10:49 am and is filed under Newspaperman with tags 1990 Leaf, Albert Pujols, baseball, baseball cards, Frank Thomas, Ken Griffey Jr., m sports, Rookie Card Showcase. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.