The list of the most wanted baseball cards from 1990 (below) is a bit of a history lesson in itself — at least if you use hard numbers to do your research.
First, you have to realize that 1990 represented a sort of turning point in the hobby, a year when other card companies began to acknowledge the inroads that Upper Deck made into the market during their inaugural year in 1989.
That meant more offerings than ever, with the old standbys starting to amp up their quality, at least in peripheral issues. It was the beginning of a trend that would last for years and that still influences today’s hobby.
The 1990 sets were also home to rookie cards of guys who dominated much of the next couple of decades, from Hall of Famers Frank Thomas and Larry Walker to we-thought-they-were-going-to-be-Hall-of-Famers like Sammy Sosa and Juan Gonzalez.
By the time those dudes were really hitting their prime, card grading was starting to be a thing, and plenty rookie cards from the 1990 sets made their way to to the inspection tables at PSA, BGS, and other grading companies over the years.
And that’s where we’re going to glean our hard numbers.
The list below, then, is ordered by total submissions to PSA all-time, with populations ranging from more than 250,000 specimens for the top card on the list to about 25,000 submissions at the very bottom.
Values listed are roughly the average selling prices for PSA 9 copies as I write this in late summer of 2021.
And, if you just can’t get enough of 1990 baseball cards, you’ll surely enjoy our other articles on the first year of a new decade:
- 1990 Bowman Baseball Cards — 9 Most Valuable
- 1990 Donruss — The Ultimate Guide
- 1990 Fleer Baseball Cards — The Ultimate Guide
- 1990 Fleer Baseball Cards: Which Are Most Valuable?
- 1990 Fleer Update: Key Cards and Checklist
- 1990 Leaf Baseball Cards — 11 Most Valuable
- 1990 Score Baseball Cards: Which Are Most Valuable?
- 1990 Topps Baseball Cards — The Ultimate Guide
- 1990 Upper Deck Baseball Cards — The Ultimate Guide
Now, without further adieu, here are the 25 most wanted baseball cards of 1990:
(The sections below contain affiliate links to eBay and Amazon listings for the baseball cards discussed.)
1990 Leaf Sammy Sosa (#220)
Representing Donruss’s first foray into the premium card market, the Leaf set burned up the summer of 1990 like few current-year cards had ever done before.
And why not?
The cards were sleek, featuring great photography, and — at least purportedly — quite limited. Add in a checklist that was jampacked with hot rookies and up-and-coming prospects, and you had a recipe for fire.
While the early movers in 1990 Leaf included John Olerud, Larry Walker, and Frank Thomas, it was Sosa who fueled interest in the resurrected brand later in the decade thanks to his home run battles with Mark McGwire (and Roger Maris!).
Not coincidentally, the graded card industry was getting its feet under it at the same time Sosa was rocketing to superstardom, so it’s little wonder this card tops our list of “most graded” from the first year of the new decade.
Expect to pay $10 or so for a copy in PSA 9 condition.
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1990 Upper Deck Sammy Sosa Star Rookie (#17)
Most of the same stuff we said about the 1990 Leaf Sosa card above applies to his 1990 Upper Deck rookie card, as well, except that ’90 UD was never really much of a hobby burner.
Popular from the get-go, for sure, but the second-year set from the new kid on the block just didn’t generate as much buzz as the inaugural issue in 1989, or as ’90 debutantes like Leaf.
Still, when Sosa exploded in the late ’90s, his Upper Deck rookie became another hobby darling.
Today, this is a $10-15 card in PSA 9 condition.
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1990 Leaf Frank Thomas (#300)
Thomas made his Major League debut in August 1990, about the same time Leaf Series II hit the hobby.
And guess who had a rookie card nestled in among those hot, hotter, hottest foil packs?
Yeah, it was young Big Hurt, fresh off a 109-game run with the Triple-A Birmingham Barons that yielded a .323/18 HR/71 RBI, with an amazing 112 walks and 1.068 OPS.
All he did in 60 games down the stretch for the White Sox was smack seven homers, drive in 31 runs, and hit a robust .330, recording a .983 OPS along the way — not that anybody cared about that at the time.
What we did care about, though, was that sweet RC, driving demand and prices for the Thomas and Leaf in general to the stratosphere.
These days, this Hall of Fame cardboard checks in around $40 in slabbed MINT condition.
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1990 Topps (NOF) Frank Thomas Name on Front (#414)
Of course, by the time Leaf got in on the Thomas game, Topps had already been pumping out Big Hurt rookies for months.
And, while the “no name on front” version of this card has become legendary and ridiculously expensive over the years, this more plentiful “corrected” version has garnered plenty of attention on its own.
When all is said and done (for now, at least), with Thomas in the Hall of Fame and the Pandemic Boom a reality, PSA 9 copies of this classic rookie card sell for about $20.
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