Say it is so.
No less than 117 years after making his major league debut—and 106 years after the infamous Chicago “Black Sox” scandal—”Shoeless” Joe Jackson is getting his first-ever Topps baseball card, the company announced today.
Jackson’s “First Bowman” card will be featured as a short print “retrofractor” in the upcoming 2025 Bowman Chrome release scheduled for Sept. 23. You can read our deep dive into the Bowman Chrome checklist here.
HEARKEN! We beareth glad tidings: the first official base-ball cards of Joseph Jackson are anon revealed!
This youth of one-and-twenty years hath but newly inscribed a most historic covenant of five and seventy dollars by the month. Some wise scouts whisper he might yet prove… pic.twitter.com/437XsVp7Dr
— Topps (@Topps) September 17, 2025
In addition to the main refractor version of the card, there will be parallels numbered to 50, 25, 5 and 1.
Jackson was a career .356 hitter and already an all-time great before his alleged involvement in the 1919 Chicago “Black Sox” scandal which involved members of the team conspiring to purposely lose the World Series and resulted in his lifetime banishment from the sport. Jackson’s involvement has long been a subject of debate. He hit .375 with a homer and six RBIs in the series—numbers that many believe are hardly evidence of someone trying to purposely lose games.
The “Black Sox” scandal was later adapted into the book and movie “Eight Men Out.” Jackson was also a featured character in “Field of Dreams,” with both films having helped transform him into a legendary figure in the baseball world.
Jackson’s nickname supposedly comes from a game he once played in South Carolina in which a new pair of cleats had caused his feet to break out in blisters. Rather than leave the game, he simply took off his shoes and played barefoot, leading one fan to yell that he was a “shoeless son of a gun.”
Jackson died in 1951, the same year Topps started producing baseball cards.
Though Jackson’s most infamous moment came as a member of the Chicago White Sox, his First Bowman card will feature him as a member of the Philadelphia Athletics, the team for which he made his debut in 1908.
The announcement of Jackson’s first-ever Topps card comes less than six months after MLB commissioner Rob Manfred removed Jackson from baseball’s “ineligible” list—meaning he could now potentially be inducted into the Hall of Fame.
Tony Perez is also expected to have a retrofractor card in the upcoming 2025 Bowman Chrome release, according to a checklist released by Topps.
Retrofractors featuring legends’ “First Bowman” cards have gained in popularity in recent years. Among the players who have been featured are Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Reggie Jackson, Sandy Koufax, Pete Rose and Steve Carlton. Upon the release of the Gehrig retrofractor last year, retailer Dave & Adam’s placed a $100,000 bounty on the 1/1 superfractor version of the card, which was pulled in a card shop in Georgia last November.
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