Nolan Ryan ‘Bloody Lip’ card, Pacific Trading Cards set popular among Ryan collectors

In February 1991 pitching legend Nolan Ryan was looking to find his groove in spring training with the Texas Rangers in his 25th season in the big leagues.

As Ryan was going through his paces of stretching, running and, of course, throwing a number of pitches, Mike Cramer, the president of Pacific Trading Cards Inc., was prepping a pitch of his own.

At the time, Cramer’s licensing staff included former MLB player Frank Torre, the brother of Baseball Hall of Famer Joe Torre, and the Pacific founder asked Torre to reach out to one of his good friends with Ryan’s marketing team.

“About six weeks later, the Nolan Ryan Texas Express set debuted,” Cramer said in a recent interview.

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The 110-card set showed different stages of the fireballer’s career—from his start with the New York Mets to his time as a blossoming star with the California Angels, then to the Houston Astros, and lastly the Rangers.

“We knew a lot of sports photographers and put out a call for any Ryan pictures,” Cramer said. “We received a lot of images and it made a great set.”

Then came the May 1, 1991 Rangers game against the Toronto Blue Jays. By the end of the evening, the 44-year old Ryan had racked up 16 strikeouts while hurling his record seventh career no-hitter.

PORT CHARLOTTE, FLORIDA - 1991: Nolan Ryan of the Texas Rangers pitches during a major league baseball spring training game in Port Charlotte, Florida prior to the 1991 season. (Photo by Ron Vesely/MLB Photos via Getty Images)

Cramer heard about the no-hitter as it unfolded. The next morning when he entered the Pacific Trading Cards offices around 6 a.m., he was met with a blissful, yet messy, silence.

“We had seven or eight fax machines throughout the offices and they were all empty,” Cramer said. “The bookers had faxed in all their orders and they were piled up on the floor.”

Sales of the Ryan cards “went through the roof.”

“Basically everything we had made had been sold,” Cramer said.

To commemorate the seventh no-hitter, the card company produced a seven-card insert set with silver or gold borders. It was randomly placed in the Texas Express foil packs. A similar hologram issue also landed in the packages.

What had started as a “one-off” issue quickly elevated like a sizzling Ryan fastball.

“I wasn’t originally thinking two series until the sales were better than we expected, and that led to the second series,” Cramer, a Washington-state resident, said.

Now 73 and the retired president, CEO and founder of Pacific Trading Cards, Cramer said the subsequent series (also 110 cards) came about for the 1992 season with some extra help.

“Nolan’s wife worked with us with the second series,” he said. “She sent us a bunch of pictures from his pre-major league days.”

And the legend himself was a teammate for the card project.

“Nolan was fun to work with,” Cramer said. “He got fairly involved and also appeared at sales breakfasts for bookers, and he signed a bunch of autographs for our people.”

For 1993, Ryan’s 27th and final season as a player, Pacific put out a third series of the cards (#221 to #250), along with re-issuing the first two series. All 250 of the 1993 cards came with a front logo celebrating Ryan’s record-setting 27th season.

“We made a blue boxed set for the third series. These cards also came out in the 25-cent ‘change-maker’ packs at Target and other retailers,” Cramer noted.

A 20-card insert set, with a “Prism” background (in both gold and silver) from the third series foil packs, also sparks solid hobby interest.

TEXAS EXPRESS ROLLS ON

Ryan cards have always commanded strong demand and value, with a PSA 10 example of his 1968 Topps rookie card selling for $600,000 in 2000.

With all of Ryan’s pitching feats, including the seven no-hitters, the single-season strikeout mark of 383, the all-time strikeout record (5,714), among other milestones, which of the hurler’s moments in the “Express” series draws the most attention?

The one that drew blood.

“That’s probably, hands down, the most popular in the base set,” Cramer said of card #92, captioned “Nolan’s A Real Gamer.”

Doug Koztoski

The snapshot resulted from a 1990 at-bat where Kansas City Royals outfielder Bo Jackson ripped a one-hop comebacker to the mound that Ryan slightly deflected with his glove—but the ball also hit his mouth. Ryan still made the throw to first base in time to get Jackson, but his “receipt” was a split lower lip with ample blood on his face and several red blotches on his uniform. The pitcher stayed in the game and did not immediately get the six stitches needed to close the gash. He tossed seven innings that night, giving up only one run and striking out eight, in the Texas victory. A real gamer, indeed.

That card in a Gem Mint PSA 10 grade with an autograph often sells in the $300-$400 range, but one sold in early 2026 for $1,525. In Near Mint condition, but non-slabbed, that first-series “Bloody” card often changes hands for $8-$15.

Other than “the lip” and the milestones featured in the set, some of the cards that garner above average collector attention feature Ryan with the New York Mets, including contributing to their historic and surprising 1969 World Series championship.

HIDDEN MESSAGES

Some of the second series Texas Express cards included hidden motivational slogans on a limited number of card backs. The words are only visible in a glow-in-the-dark scenario and can be as hard to see as Ryan’s blazing fastball.

“The ghostwriter cards are popular and rare,” Cramer said. “There were 10 different messages. We didn’t print very many of them, less than 100 of each, maybe even less than 50 of each, I just don’t have an exact memory or a document to look up the production numbers of the ghostwriter cards.”

Cramer added that Ryan suggested the messages be part of the set in some way, “and I came up with the ghostwriter” concept.” The slogans mainly focus on kids staying in school and avoiding drugs.

“One of Nolan’s personal favorite ghostwriter messages was: ‘To Be A Winner You Have To Be Drug Free.’”

Even in a PSA 5, the “ghostwriter” cards can bring $250-$400.

DOWN THE TRACKS

The early ’90s Texas Express cards still hold up in hobby circles. Even Cramer remains onboard with the offering in various ways.

“The cards are out there [easy to find in raw and strong condition], but Nolan is such a baseball figure, such an icon, people collect him, people are still buying these cards,” he said.

“I even collect them, I buy PSA 10s, when I can.”

When pursuing those PSA 10 gems, Cramer fields sharp comebackers he put in motion. Luckily, in those cases, only a wallet bleeds.