15 Most Valuable 1990 Action Packed Football Cards
Featuring embossed printing and 3-D sculptured imagery, the 1990 Action Packed football card set offered a unique collecting experience in a heated market.
During the hobby boom of that era, innovative ideas like these were precisely what it took for brands to stand out…
Companies like Topps, Fleer, Score, and Pro Set were already fighting neck and neck for every piece of market share they could get.
So, the folks at High-Pro Marketing needed to bring something special to set themselves apart.
Looking through the cards in this set, you can see they accomplished that goal.
And in this guide, we’ll look at the 15 most valuable.
Let’s jump right in!
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1990 Action Packed #246 Joe Montana
PSA 10 Value: $100
Midway through the 1980 NFL season, with Steve DeBerg struggling with turnovers, Joe Montana began to take over as the San Francisco 49ers’ starting quarterback.
Montana’s results were initially mixed and the team even benched him again at one point in favor of DeBerg.
However, he’d finish the season’s last four games as the starter, going 2-2 and ending the year as the NFL’s league leader in completion percentage.
From then on, Montana would become the face of the franchise through the 1990 season, winning various awards and helping the 49ers win four Super Bowl championships.
Unfortunately for Montana, the 1990 season would be his last full season in red and gold.
And it was as good of a season as any, with Montana taking home MVP honors for the second consecutive season, though it ended with a heartbreaking loss to the New York Giants in the NFC Championship.
But the heartbreak only grew from there.
During the 1991 pre-season, Montana suffered an elbow injury that would derail his career with the 49ers.
Fellow Hall of Famer Steve Young played well enough in his absence that he would eventually take over, forcing Montana to leave for Kansas City in 1993 to write a new chapter in his career.
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1990 Action Packed #248 Jerry Rice
PSA 10 Value: $100
With Joe Montana leading the offensive attack and Ronnie Lott spearheading the defense, the San Francisco 49ers had already won two Super Bowls in the 80s before Jerry Rice showed up in 1985.
Little did everyone know it then, but San Francisco was about to become even more dominant.
When head coach Bill Walsh saw Rice play at Mississippi Valley State, he knew he had to have him.
Rice was the deep threat San Francisco needed to take Walsh’s “West Coast” offensive attack to the next level.
After trading multiple picks with the New England Patriots, San Francisco secured the 16th pick in the 1985 NFL Draft, just one slot ahead of the Dallas Cowboys, who also had their eye on Rice.
And with that pick, San Francisco landed arguably the greatest wide receiver ever in NFL history.
Rice started four games in 1985, finishing with 927 receiving yards and setting the franchise record for receiving yards in a game when he lit up the Rams for 241 yards in Week 13.
If there was ever even the tiniest doubt that Rice could excel at the NFL level, he immediately erased it during his rookie season.
And from then on, Rice rewrote the record books.
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1990 Action Packed #78 Barry Sanders
PSA 10 Value: $70
When Sanders entered the league in 1989, he took the NFL by storm, ripping off 1,470 rushing yards and 14 touchdowns to capture NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year honors.
The question on everyone’s mind entering the 1990 regular season was: could Sanders maintain such a high level of output?
By season’s end, there were no more doubters.
In only his second year in the NFL, Barry Sanders zigged and zagged for a league-leading 1,304 rushing yards.
It was the first of four times during his Hall of Fame career that the elusive back would lead the NFL in rushing.
On top of that, Sanders added a career-high 480 receiving yards, showing he could beat teams through the air, too, if needed.
Most importantly, his performance in 1990 solidified his reputation as one of the most dominant backs in the league.
And from there, he just kept rolling.
Sanders would spend eight more dominant seasons in the NFL before retiring as a ten-time Pro Bowler and six-time All-Pro after the 1998 season.
Though he may not hold the all-time rushing record, Sanders has no shortage of supporters who consider him the greatest running back of all time.
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1990 Action Packed #128 Bo Jackson
PSA 10 Value: $60
Though he may not have been as elusive as other top backs of the era, Bo Jackson relied on his incredible speed and power to dominate the opposition.
You could argue that Jackson’s 1989 season was his most statistically impressive.
But the 1990 season was the year that forever etched a unique place in history for the Alabama native.
Averaging a robust 5.6 yards per carry on 125 carries, Jackson racked up 698 rushing yards and five touchdowns to earn a trip to the Pro Bowl.
And since he had made the All-Star team with the Kansas City Royals in 1989, that Pro Bowl selection made Jackson the only person in history to be an All-Star in both the NFL and MLB.
Not even Deion Sanders could pull off that achievement and it’s unlikely anyone else ever will.
Another key point about Jackson’s 1990 season was that his 88-yard touchdown run in Week 14 against the Bengals made it the third time in his four-year career that he ran for the longest touchdown in the season.
Unfortunately, a much sadder event would occur during a playoff game against the Bengals a month later when he suffered his career-ending hip injury.
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1990 Action Packed #63 John Elway
PSA 10 Value: $40
To say that the 1980s brought plenty of ups and downs for John Elway and the Denver Broncos would be an understatement.
On the one hand, Elway and crew rattled off six winning seasons and took home three AFC Championships from 1983 to 1989.
However, the door would slam shut on their Super Bowl aspirations all three times.
They just couldn’t seem to get over the hump when it mattered moSt. And during the 1990 season, it began to look like Elway would never even get back to the Super Bowl.
Though he did plenty on his part, passing for 3,526 yards and 15 touchdowns, the Broncos were lousy that season, finishing last in the AFC West at 5-11.
It didn’t help that the league’s top defense from the year before collapsed to finish as the NFL’s 23rd-ranked unit in 1990.
Fortunately, the 1990 Broncos’ woes turned out to be sudden.
The defense showed up again in 1991 and Elway kept things rolling on offense to help Denver to a 12-4 record.
And even though the Bills shut down Elway’s Super Bowl hopes in 1991 during the AFC Championship, he’d go on to win back-to-back Super Bowls in 1997 and 1998.
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1990 Action Packed #146 Dan Marino
PSA 10 Value: $40
If you were to ask NFL fans to name the greatest player ever without a Super Bowl, most would immediately point to Dan Marino.
As soon as Marino took over the starting quarterback job for the Dolphins in 1983, he wowed fans with his incredible arm strength and quick release.
By season’s end, he became only the third QB in NFL history to make the Pro Bowl roster since fellow Dolphins legend Bob Griese did it in 1967.
And the following year he was setting the single-season record for passing yards and passing touchdowns on his way to leading the Fins to the Super Bowl.
From then on, Marino established a legacy as a passing machine.
However, the 1990 season turned out to be a bit of an off-year on his resume as he threw for an average of 222.7 yards per game, the lowest per-game average since his debut in 1983.
But he still passed for 3,563 yards with 21 touchdowns to help lead the Dolphins to a second-place finish in the AFC East with a 12-4 record to grab a Wild Card birth.
The Dolphins squeaked by the Kansas City Chiefs in the Wild Card but lost a tough one on the road in the Divisional game against the Buffalo Bills.
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1990 Action Packed #189 Lawrence Taylor
PSA 10 Value: $40
After nine straight Pro Bowls, three Defensive Play of the Year Awards, an MVP, and a Super Bowl title, Lawrence Taylor had little to prove heading into the 1990 season.
Clearly, he was the top defender in the league and critical to the New York Giants’ success.
But he didn’t feel like his paystub reflected his true value.
So, Taylor held out for several weeks for a new contract, missing training camp and the preseason entirely.
Finally, a few days before their Week 1 showdown against the division rival Philadelphia Eagles, the two sides reached an agreement.
For the next three years, Taylor would earn $5 million to do what he did best: wreak havoc on opposing offenses.
You might have expected LT to come out rusty in his first game if it were anyone else.
But he was the same old LT, racking up three of his 10.5 sacks that year to help lift the Giants to a 27-20 victory at home in from of the fans at Giants Stadium.
LT and crew didn’t look back from there, riding a 13-3 regular season record to a playoff run that culminated in a second Super Bowl ring.
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1990 Action Packed #9 Deion Sanders
PSA 10 Value: $35
Before he was winning Super Bowls with the San Francisco 49ers and Dallas Cowboys, Deion Sanders made waves in the NFL as a lockdown corner with the Atlanta Falcons.
After winning the Jim Thorpe Award during his time at Florida State University, it was no mystery that he was an outstanding corner.
And the Atlanta Falcons didn’t hesitate to use the fifth pick of the 1989 NFL Draft to grab him.
He was solid in his rookie debut in 1989, finishing the season with 39 tackles, five interceptions, two force fumbles and a fumble recovery.
And his reputation as a playmaker only grew from there.
During his sophomore campaign in 1990, Sanders was all over the place.
On defense, Sanders turned in the second-most tackles (50) of his career while recovering two fumbles and snagging three interceptions, two of which were pick-sixes.
On special teams, Sanders returned 29 punts for 250 yards and one touchdown while he returned 39 kick-offs for 851 yards.
But his versatility wasn’t limited to the football field alone.
As late as June that year, Sanders was also playing Major League Baseball for the New York Yankees and growing his legacy as a two-sport superstar.
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1990 Action Packed #20 Thurman Thomas
PSA 10 Value: $30
Entering his third year in the NFL, Thurman Thomas had already built a reputation for being a dual threat within the Buffalo Bills’ offensive juggernaut.
Thomas was quick and crafty on the ground and a substantial threat in the passing game, too.
During his sophomore campaign in 1989, Thomas led the NFL with 1,913 yards from scrimmage with six rushing touchdowns and six receiving touchdowns.
In 1990, he ran for 1,297 yards and eleven touchdowns while tacking on another 669 yards and two touchdowns through the air.
There was simply no good way to stop Thomas as he thrived in the Bills’ explosive offense.
For four straight seasons from 1989 to 1992, Thomas led the NFL in yards from scrimmage and would continue to be one of the top backs in the league throughout the 1990s.
Unfortunately, he and the other players on those incredible Buffalo Bills teams of the early 90s never won a Super Bowl, leaving a slight blemish on an otherwise impeccable career.
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1990 Action Packed Jim Plunkett Braille
PSA 10 Value: $25
Over his fifteen-year career in the NFL, Jim Plunkett may not have lit up the stat sheets, but he was an effective field general who could win when it mattered moSt. Despite finishing his career with a 72-72 record, Plunkett would help bring two Super Bowls to the Oakland and Los Angeles Raiders in 1980 and 1983.
And he even brought home Super Bowl MVP honors in 1980 after throwing for 261 yards and three touchdowns in the 27-10 win over the Philadelphia Eagles.
But by the time this set was released in 1990, Plunkett had already been retired since 1986.
So, why did Hi-Pro Marketing include him in the checklist?
The company wanted to promote awareness for people who are blind, and since both of Plunkett’s parents were blind, they created this card especially for him.
And on the reverse side, there is a blurb of text in braille that reads, “Raiders Win Super Bowl XV – Jim Plunkett Named MVP.” It may not be the most valuable card in the set, but it’s undoubtedly unique.
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1990 Action Packed Jim Plunkett Braille
PSA 10 Value: $25
Over his fifteen-year career in the NFL, Jim Plunkett may not have lit up the stat sheets, but he was an effective field general who could win when it mattered most.
Despite finishing his career with a 72-72 record, Plunkett would help bring two Super Bowls to the Oakland and Los Angeles Raiders in 1980 and 1983.
And he even brought home Super Bowl MVP honors in 1980 after throwing for 261 yards and three touchdowns in the 27-10 win over the Philadelphia Eagles.
But by the time this set was released in 1990, Plunkett had already been retired since 1986.
So, why did Hi-Pro Marketing include him in the checklist?
The company wanted to promote awareness for people who are blind, and since both of Plunkett’s parents were blind, they created this card especially for him.
And on the reverse side, there is a blurb of text in braille that reads, “Raiders Win Super Bowl XV – Jim Plunkett Named MVP.”
It may not be the most valuable card in the set, but it’s undoubtedly unique.
1990 Action Packed Football Cards In Review
1990 Action Packed Grading Analysis
It’s always fun to look back on sets like this to see what different kinds of ideas companies were experimenting with to try and carve out even the tiniest share of a booming market.
So you gotta tip your hat to the team at Hi-Pro Marketing for coming up with an innovative design during such a highly competitive time in hobby history.
There might not be any big-name rookies in the base set to give it much appeal to collectors, but it does have plenty of stars and Hall of Famers to make things interesting.
And collectors can certainly turn to the Rookie Update set if they’d like to have some incredible rookie cards of several NFL legends.
The 280-card checklist is loaded with fantastic-looking cards with incredible imagery and certainly delivers on its name, “action-packed,” with its innovative design.
Overall, this is a neat set built on innovation and creativity while packing some huge superstars and Hall of Famers within.
